


Family History

by Sealie



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010), Stargate Atlantis, Traders (TV 1995)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sealie/pseuds/Sealie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stargate Atlantis and Hawaii 50 crossover</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family History

**Author's Note:**

> SGA/Traders* crossover with Hawaii 5-0 crew and a guest from the Listener**.
> 
> Rating: PG-15/gennish
> 
> Genre: action/adventure, h/c.
> 
> Warning: mentions of slavery and behaviour therein e.g. treatment of humans as property.
> 
> Advisory: my standard potty mouth; murder; mayhem and criminal investigations plus too many adjectives. British English spelling.
> 
> Spoilers: set after the end of Stargate Atlantis and Traders. Vast and inclusive mention of events in the first season of the Listener** and Hawaii 5-0 with pure, happy speculation and indulgence of fantasy elements about how events of H 5-0 1:24 play out.
> 
> *Set in the SGA/Traders universe (series [1, ](http://archiveofourown.org/series/10733)[2,](http://archiveofourown.org/series/10851)[and 3.](http://archiveofourown.org/series/10853)), but you should be able to read it without knowing that series. The important fact is that Grant Jansky (played by DH in the series Traders) is on Atlantis, as the Trust and NID wish to utilise his mathematical skills for nefarious purposes. Grant is autistic (although the diagnosis is not that concrete). He is Rodney McKay’s cousin.
> 
> **The Listener is a Canadian television series that, I believe, tanked in the US. Plot wise, for this story, no introduction is necessary.
> 
> Betas: Cindy Combs audienced this story throughout its writing and had many pertinent comments. Springwoof beta’d the first draft and pointed out many, many things. LKY and Susn had sight of draft two, their betaing was invaluable. Cindy Combs beta’d draft three. Thank you all.
> 
> This is the fic for help-pakistan appeal for raphe1. It only took me a year to write it. But I did say that I was a slow writer and promised +2000 words. The actual word count is:
> 
> Word count: +33, 000

Family History  
By Sealie

 **Part one**

As scientific conferences went, John Sheppard thought that attending the UCAF – 2011 symposium on ‘Communication, Intelligence and Automation Engineering” was interesting, but it didn’t make his heart sing with anticipation like a conference on ‘Engineering Advancements in Flight’ might have. A conference about Artificial Intelligence was fascinating but AI was also one giant, kick ass threat to the SGC, Earth, and the entire galaxy.

It was also one of the few areas of research that the IOA and the SGC allowed distilled, minor advancements in to be released to the general public. Rodney had alternatively cackled with glee and railed with frustration because one, that the IOA-SGC had allowed IA research out from under their aegis meant that they didn’t understand the ramifications and, two, it wasn’t really his field.

Grant had, however, written a paper and had it accepted by the conference panel. By default, Rodney had devised an algorithm which mapped human neural processes and submitted his own paper. So two SGC funded scientists were going to the University of Toronto to present at the conference. Radek promptly built a rough-and-ready (by Atlantis standards) robot and invited himself on the ride. The entire computer and data intelligence department had then risen up in the biggest free-for-all John had ever seen trying to either downgrade or reverse engineer alien tech to the degree that something could be presented or quickly cobble together an idea catalysed by their research over the last five or so years. After eight of his scientists had presented papers to Rodney for consideration to be submitted to the Conference, Rodney had had to call it quits, much to the disgruntlement of the entire department. There were two that made the cut anyway since they were so deftly crafted by Rodney’s extreme standards. John basically thought that they were too cool to leave out. And neither the IOA nor the SGC were able to protest on grounds of security concerns or intellectual property.

John was babysitting five scientists.

He wasn’t stupid. He had also brought Marines and Air Force officers: one sergeant, one corporal, a lieutenant, and Major Evan Lorne.

Tucked beside him, out of the traffic of academics, students, contractors, corporate representatives, governmental scientists and others that John couldn’t identify, Grant was nibbling his fingernails to the quick in pure, unadulterated terror.

“There’s so many people,” Grant said around his fingers.

John could only nod. When living on Atlantis, crowds -- when you didn’t know the name of everyone present -- could only make you cautious.

Rodney bounded up, the people parting before him. “I have our registration packages. I figured you’d want the backpack.” Rodney thrust a black faux leather backpack and laminated ID card into John’s hand. “I’ve got us messenger bags,” he said to Grant.

Grant opened his conference package and admired the laminated card, rubbing the smooth surface. “What did you get Radek?”

“Radek can get his own.” Rodney rolled his eyes. “Come on, I want to listen to the Keynote Speech.” He turned on his heel and dove back into the crowd.

Grant looked mutely at John and John gazed back until Grant stood a fraction taller and lifted his chin.

“Come on, Squirrel, they’re only scientists.”

Grant shuffled a little closer to John as they made their way through the press of people in the wake of Rodney’s passage.

~*~

“Sir.” Sergeant Dusty Mehra saluted.

“Psst.” John waved off the salute and then abortively returned it. “We’re kind of undercover.” He dropped his hand to tug at the short collar of his black shirt.

The younger woman nodded and immediately relaxed her stance. “Corporal Shenouda is with Drs. Óskarsson and Harrington. They said they are staying for the meet-and-greet tonight.”

“It seems to be the thing to do,” John said. “Go on; keep an eye on your guys. We’ll also be mingling.”

John blew out a sigh. He guessed that the booze was going to be rough and the hors d'œuvres mediocre. A waitress drifted past, a silver tray balanced on one hand. John relieved her of a tall glass of wine. He gave it a judicious sniff and identified it as an inferior sparkling cava, but better than Radek’s rotgut. Rodney was across from him, some sort of puff pastry confection in his hand and an identical glass of cava in the other. Grant was scrunched beside Rodney, glass of coke clutched against his chest. John scanned the crowd. Evan Lorne and Lieutenant Cody Hall were chatting with Radek who was bright eyed with excitement. He had presented his robot during a workshop –-

“I need some help!”

A tiny scrap of a kid was holding up a tall, rail-thin elderly man who was wavering like a falling tree. John was there in a heartbeat, helping the kid lower the man to the floor.

“Someone one call 911,” John ordered. Was it 911 in Canada? John kind of thought that it was. “Do you know him? Is he on any medication?”

“Professor Alexander. And no…” The little androgynous-looking, white-haired kid flushed pink. “He never said. I wouldn’t know!”

There was a pale luminous cast to the professor’s skin -- turning it a moribund shade of translucent which John recognised.

“Where’s the paramedics?” John demanded. “Sir, can you raise your arms?”

The man grimaced at him as he clutched, fingers clawed, at his chest. Heart attack, John judged. Transport was paramount. They had rented an SUV; they could take the professor to the nearest hospital.

“Sir,” Sergeant Mehra said, “dispatch says that the paramedics are on their way. Arrival is imminent.”

“Send--”

“Lieutenant Hall has gone to the foyer to direct them here.” The team had studied the layout of the conference hall, adjacent workshop rooms and exits prior to arriving.

“Clear the area,” John directed. He loosened the professor’s tie. Airway, he thought. Breathing – laboured. Circulation – compromised. The kid was keeping the professor propped up, aiding his breathing.

“Clear the way. Clear the way!” Rodney ordered somewhere out of view. The crowd parted and two paramedics, hauling boxes, thumped down beside their patient. Quickly, John backed off, giving the floor to the professionals. Dusty offered him a hand hauling him easily to his feet. The younger paramedic only looked a little older than the kid with the professor. But he was leading where his slightly older partner was support, opening his box of equipment and handing over a stethoscope.

“Hi, sir. My name’s Toby. Can you tell me if you’re on any medication?” he asked as he set the prongs in his ears. Baring the professor’s chest he set the bell over the man’s probably struggling heart. _::Come on, think it. I’ll hear::_

John blinked and rubbed at his temple.

 _::Excellent::_ Momentarily abandoning the stethoscope, Toby dipped into the professor’s front jacket pocket and pulled out a small aerosol. “Open your mouth, sir.”

Deftly, he sprayed liquid under the professor’s tongue.

The other paramedic unfurled tubing leading to an oxygen mask and twisted open the canister on the other end. He handed over the mask.

 _::Thanks, Oz::_

 _Holy shit,_ John thought. _What the Hell?_

The dark-haired paramedic spun on his heels and he stared directly at John. The kid’s blue eyes were shocked.

 _::Did you hear me?::_ a thread of hope twined around the kid’s thoughts.

 _I—_ John managed, shocked both speechless and practically thoughtless.

 _::Damn it. I gotta look after my patient. Stay here. I’ll come back at the end of my shift!::_ With that he turned back to the ailing professor, presenting the narrow span of his shoulders and impenetrable silence.

John stepped back, right into Dusty, accidently stepping on the woman’s foot. The dark haired sergeant steadied him without a word.

“Clear an exit to the door for the paramedics,” John ordered by rote.

John stood watch as Toby and Oz secured their patient and prepared him for transport amid an array of equipment set on the gurney. They were flanked by Lorne and the student, with Sergeant Mehra on point efficiently ordering milling civilians out of the way. Corporal Shenouda had secured the exit and was keeping one eye on the ambulance.

“John,” Grant whispered and shuffled into his personal space.

“Hey, Squirrel,” John said absently. What the Hell had just happened? It had been telepathy. Not like a Wraith Queen. It had been distinct thoughts rather than the heavy-handed pressure of a Wraith’s overpowering focus on a command or single word. Why the fuck did this happen to him? ”What do you know about telepathy, Grant?”

“I think it’s like radio. I tried a tin hat once but it gave me a headache. Thought processes should be detectable with the correct receiver; they’re measurable.”

John tapped his discreet ear piece. “Lieutenant Hall, bring the SUV around to the front of the building. We’re going to the hospital.”

“What?” Rodney demanded over their communications network. “Why? Did you strain yourself catching that cadaverous old guy?”

“There’s something I want to check out. You can stay. Lorne, stay with Rodney.”

John strode through the crowd of onlookers, distantly aware that he was the recipient of some intrigued and speculative stares; maybe because it looked like he was talking to himself, or because he had a retinue, or both.

By the time he made it to the street, the stockier, slightly older paramedic was closing the doors at the back of the ambulance rig. He nodded at John as he made his way to the front.

Cody Hall pulled up behind the ambulance in their big, glossy -- totally necessary –-bulletproof SUV. As John climbed into the passenger front seat, the door behind him closed. Turning, he watched Grant carefully fit his seatbelt catch into the lock and sit back.

“You coming with?”

Grant nodded, fingers picking at the pressed seam on his khaki pants. “There’s a session tomorrow chaired by Professor Mercer on extra-sensory modes of communication. I thought that you would like to know.”

“The ambulance is moving, sir,” Cody said.

John settled back in his seat. Slouching, he set one foot on the dashboard and contemplated.

~*~

Cody pulled into the ambulance bay of the nearest hospital according to the neat little map application that Grant had on his cellular phone thingy. John guessed that it was probably an Atlantis LSD with a few grafted nanites that Grant had taught how to shape shift. The thing seemed to have enough processing power to get the Space Shuttle into orbit.

“Find a parking space,” John directed as he jumped out of the SUV, milliseconds after Cody pulled to a halt. “Stay there.”

“Aye, sir.”

Grant scurried out of the car, adept at keeping up. The automatic doors parted before them as John strode into the busy emergency room. There didn’t seem to be a reception desk, just a long, wide corridor, an open area with chairs and cubicles offset from the corridor and kitty-corner to the seats. He immediately spotted the professor’s student, standing shell-shocked by a vending machine.

“Hey, kid?” He genuinely didn’t know if the student was male or female. Skinny, with a shock of white hair, pale blue eyes framed by white lashes, in a pink, tear stained face, the kid looked like rather than attending a scientific conference, he or she should be in high school. “Have you heard anything?”

“They just took him in.” The kid pointed at a curtained off room. “The guy in the ambulance said he didn’t think it was too bad.”

“What’s your name, kid? I’m John.”

“Jeremy.”

“Come on, sit. You want a Pepsi, Jeremy?” John was already digging in his jean’s pocket for some change as the kid sat on a plastic bucket seat pushed up against the wall. The kid needed some sugar. Without waiting for an answer, he plugged in some cash and selected a full sugar Pepsi. “Grant, do you want something?”

“No.” Grant shook his head, more concerned with mapping the human chaos in the waiting room and corridor bisecting the area.

“Out of the line of fire, Grant.” John took him by the elbow and swung him into the dubious protection of the vending machine and a potted plant, ensuring that he had his back to a wall.

The doors opposite them opened and the two paramedics exited, towing the empty gurney between them. Inside the treatment room, John caught a glimpse of the controlled chaos of a medical team responding to an acute crisis and then the doors swung shut.

Jeremy stood up, spilling sticky Pepsi on the floor. “The prof?”

“Hey, kiddo,” Oz said, abandoning the gurney to his partner. “The docs here are great. You talked to anyone yet? You got your professor’s details?”

Jeremy shook his head, but then, confusingly, nodded.

“Go on, Oz, show him where to go,” Toby said. “I’ll sort out the rig.”

Oz grinned warm and friendly, his ebullience even drawing a timid smile from Grant, as he swung an arm over Jeremy’s shoulder and led him away.

John looked down at Toby; he stood a fraction shorter.

 _::Can you still hear me?::_ Toby asked, crystal clear straight into his thoughts.

John was abruptly aware of the complete insanity of the whole affair. He was standing in a busy emergency room in a downtown Toronto hospital. Hunting a telepath.

 _Yes_ , John finally responded, in the forefront of his thoughts, _I can._

The kid smiled, elated. _::Finally. How have you coped? Where are you from? What’s your name? Am I--::_

“I think,” John said verbally stopping the torrent, “we should take this someplace else?”

“Yes.” Toby pushed the gurney down the corridor.

John automatically lent a hand. “Come on, Grant.”

Grant trotted along at his side, his bobbing gaze alternatively catching John’s eyes and then laser focusing on the back of Toby’s head. The ambulance rig was half parked – half abandoned by the main entrance. Toby opened the doors and loaded the collapsing gurney in the back with the smooth ease of long practice.

“I’m just going to move it away from the doors. And –- _then we can grab a coffee -–_ or something?” Toby said in a mishmash.

 _Coffee, sounds good._

Toby pointed at a sunset yellow painted diner-café on the corner directly opposite the busy entrance of the hospital.

“That place is good.”

“We’ll see you over there,” John said. He caught Grant’s elbow and steered him away. He settled on focusing on safely crossing a busy street in a busy city, going into a mom-and-pop diner, smiling at a waitress, and insisting on a booth that allowed him to watch both exits.

Grant shuffled up against the back of the booth and tapped the polished, glass mirror on the wall, checking his reflection.

“Coffee?” The waitress held a carafe of fresh smelling coffee.

“Yeah, please.” John held his mug up for her. “Grant will have a chocolate milkshake. A friend’s coming over. We’ll get some food or something when he gets here.”

“Sure, hun.” She sauntered off, sticking her notepad in her apron pocket and pencil behind her ear.

The motion made John trigger the comm stuck in his ear. “Cody?”

“Yes, sir?” Cody said immediately.

“Where are you?”

“Public parking lot, two blocks down, north west of the hospital. I’ve parked for three hours. I have a good view of the street. Do you want me to join you, Colonel?”

“We’re in the diner on the corner. Sunset yellow awning. Stay with the vehicle.” John flicked the comm off.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Grant watching him through the mirror. John leaned back, slouching and moving out of sight. Grant immediately shuffled around and, chin dipped low, looked at him through his eyelashes.

John snorted. “When I know what’s happening, I’ll tell you.”

The door chimed as the paramedic entered. He waved at the waitress, who called out a cheerful hello. He spotted John and Grant immediately and headed straight over. Sliding into the booth opposite John and blowing out a sigh, he set his hands palm down and looked directly at John.

His eyes were a blue-grey and framed by jet black lashes. They were luminous -- but not in a creepy alien way.

“I’m Toby Logan,” he said, and the kid just exuded honesty.

“John Sheppard.” He kept his hands under the table. “This is Grant, a friend.”

 _::Is he telepathic? I can’t get a read on him? How’s he doing that?::_ Toby smiled at Grant, who was nibbling on his little fingernail as he played with his alien Blackberry  TM.

 _How,_ John just went with his gut, _are you doing this?_

Toby blinked. _::What do you mean? It just is. I have always. You’re like me…::_

He didn’t think the ‘please God, be like me’ but even though the words weren’t crystal clear, John could feel them in his gut.

 _I’ve had a couple of experiences where I’ve… heard thoughts. This is,_ John pondered a second, _different_.

“Here’s your milkshake.” The waitress leaned over, passing it to Grant. “Can I get your orders, boys?

“Uhm.” John plucked the menu from the stand on the table and scanned it at the speed of light. “Classic burger and fries. That sound good, Grant?”

Grant did his characteristic little head bob.

“Two, please,” John confirmed.

“BLT and some fries,” Toby said.

She retrieved her pencil from behind her ear and scribbled on her pad. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Toby said politely. “Coke.”

Smiling, she sauntered off, hips sashaying.

Toby’s eyes were piercing, it was startling. “Your family? Did you hear your mom?”

“No.” John shied away from the memory of the Wraith Queen forcing him to his knees.

“What the – _Hell was that?... ::_

John slammed back in the booth, forcibly picturing the stretch of horizon over the curve of the earth as he piloted his helicopter over the white expanse of an Antarctic ice sheet.

 _Kid, don’t pick my brains. You won’t like what you see. And you won’t like the results._

Toby raised his hands. _::Don’t think so loud. That was as freaky as Hell. I don’t. I don’t. You’re the first telepath I’ve really met. I get images and some words. That was some ‘image.’ That was freaky::_

“Freaky is one word.” John took a too-hot mouthful of his coffee.

“That lady Goth was… er… freaky,” Toby observed.

Grant sucked loudly, drawing the final dregs of his milkshake from the base of the glass. His creepy-assed, shiny black, alien BlackberryTM lying on the table was pointed at them. The LCD screen was a kaleidoscope of colour and shapes cycling around an inner centre.

“Grant,” John said, chastising.

Grant blew out his cheeks around the straw.

 _::Look, my mom was taken when I was a little kid. I think people were after her because she was like us.::_

 _Kid, I’m not a telepath. I’m just …_

 _::Sensitive?::_

“No! I’ve just been exposed to a lot of weird shit.”

A flare of hurt crossed Toby’s face. “You seem pretty telepathic to me,” he said under his breath.

Grant hummed.

John shot a glare at Grant, who uncharacteristically met his gaze head on. With a degree of unprecedented deliberation, he looked at John and then at Toby, and slowly he turned in his seat to look at the mirror and the reflected scene. Automatically, John looked at his reflection and the nearly empty diner, trying to see what had Grant’s interest. Toby also stared at their reflection. Black, tufty hair, Toby’s cut shorter than John’s. Similar slim build; the narrow span of their shoulders likely barely wider than their hips.

“Toby’s ears aren’t pointy, though,” Grant said conversationally.

John’s mouth fell open.

“Brother?” Toby whispered, hope permeating every pore.

John turned away from the mirror and its secrets. The dark haired, skinny assed kid still sat directly opposite him. Blond haired, blued eyed, square jawed David was his brother, brother from a different mother.

“87% probability of a close familial relationship,” Grant said _sotto voce_.

“How old are you?” John asked, or rather, demanded.

“I’m thirty.” Toby rolled his eyes.

“Were you having sex when you were fourteen?” Grant asked John, brightly.

“Grant! No. Yes. NO! Jesus.” John could feel the blush on his cheeks.

Toby’s mouth dropped open. There was a blank space of complete surprise where previously thoughts were living. John poked that thought like a tooth with a hole in it. A little curl of a smile graced Grant’s face.

“You made up that statistic, didn’t you,” John said.

“No!” Grant protested, wide-eyed. “There’s a range of error that I didn’t mention, ‘cause ‘uhm, it’s flexible. But the thing you’re doing.” He leaned over and peered at the LCD screen. “Toby -- mainly, I think -- probably means you’re related.”

“You’re monitoring us?” Toby made a grab for the phone, but Grant was faster than a striking rattlesnake when his toys were threatened.

“Mine!” It disappeared into the breast pocket of his North Face jacket. The rasp of the zip was loud and he held the tag close against his chest. “Tell him to stop!”

“Shush, shhhhhhh, Grant, it’s okay.” John flipped his hand at the kid and he dropped back onto the booth seat. “Toby’s not going to do anything. It’s cool.”

 _::What is he doing?::_

 _Gimme a second._

“Toby’s a friend. You figured out yourself we’re cousins or something. And--” he cut a glance at Toby, “--he’s a paramedic. He helps people; he’s one of the good guys.”

Slowly, Grant unclenched from his huddle. “Oh. Okay. He still can’t have my tricorder. Also Rodney would be very annoyed if I lost it.”

John made a mental note to confiscate and lock Grant’s tricorder (for God’s Sake) in a Naquada safe as soon as possible. Rubbing at the dint above his nose he considered his next step. There were so many options it was paralysing.

Toby was watching them both with his mouth open.

“Did you get that?” John waggled his hand aimlessly around at his temple.

Toby closed his mouth with a clack. “Honestly, no. It wasn’t distinct, discernable thought. You kinda went lots of places – the outer space stuff, I really don’t get.” He leaned over the plastic table top. “Seriously, I hear the surface stuff. Strong memories come to the surface. But really it’s the conscious, completely formed thoughts I pick up most clearly. Often Images. Most thoughts are diffuse.”

“Passive,” Grant said.

“But you know this,” Toby continued. _::You can hear me::_

 _Believe it or not, Kid, this is a first._

 _::?????? You’re taking this really well::_ Toby oozed disbelief.

 _Sort of a first. Telepaths. Not that surprising in the scheme of things. That we’re related – complicates things._

“I think I should go.” Toby stood, but immediately dropped back down. “Shit. We’re related. People took my mom. Took my baby brother. People look for me. People will now look for you!”

The intensity of his words drew the attention of the couple at the window seat playing footsie under the table.

“Can of worms,” Grant said. “People came for me. You can only run to your family.”

The door chimed, and tall, red headed Lieutenant Cody Hall strode into the diner. His height and his confident demeanour caught everyone’s eye.

“Sir.” Cody refrained from saluting but he stood at parade rest. “There’s a black SUV with darkened windows parked directly opposite. I ran the plates and they’re not registered.”

“Jesus.” John rubbed his face with his hands. Why couldn’t anything be simple?

Toby was on his feet like a shot, but Cody moved faster, stepping into his path, hemming the kid in the booth.

“Toby.” John stood and raised a hand. The freakiest part of this whole affair was the ease with which he accepted that this scrawny kid was a telepath and that he could also talk to him. On a scale of one to ten of the things which he’d experienced since joining the SGC, this rated as six on the personal shit scale, but a mere three on the things are going to get hairy scale.

 _::What?::_ Toby demanded.

“You’re safer with me and my team than running around out there. Cody, did you bring the SUV around or is it still in the parking lot?”

“It’s in the parking lot, sir.”

“Okay, we’re going out the back.” John dug out his bill fold and tossed a pink fifty dollar bill down, vastly over-paying. But the poor waitress was probably going to have to face off against some Men-in-Black running though here like shit through a goose.

“Kid, you have to trust me.”

Toby was a blank. His skin had turned chill-white and his blue-grey eyes had shifted to shocked, bleached stormy grey.

“Cody, you have point. I’m on six. Toby, follow Cody. Come on, Squirrel.” John caught Grant’s collar and hauled him out of the booth.

Cody moved, long legs taking easy, fast steps toward the kitchen. Toby shot a glance at John, came to a decision, and set off after Cody. John straight-arm propelled Grant towards the saloon-type doors separating the kitchen from the serving area. Seeing them move, Cody passed through the swinging doors. John could hear him apologising as he blew through the kitchen, Toby at his heels. As he and Grant passed through, the sight of the cook, skillet raised, muttering, “Geez, it’s just like television,” stuck in John’s mind.

The spring sun out in the back alley was bright and refreshing. Cody turned left and loped off.

“Always running,” Grant muttered under his breath as he was pushed along. “I should stay in the lab.”

“I should remember the four Marines: one civilian ratio when we’re off world,” John said pithily.

 **End part one.**

 **Part two**

Toby running ahead of him was a solidly bright light from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Grant felt like he could almost reach out and dabble through Toby’s aura like mixing finger paints. Sunshine yellow was the predominant shade, with a more silvery cast flaring around his head like an aurora. Flyboy’s could almost be as bright, especially when he was focussed on saving people.

Like now.

Toby ran before him and there was a warm hand on his back pushing him forward as they dodged through the traffic across the street. A car horn beeped. Grant flinched away as the knife-like sound cut at him. A screech of brakes ahead. A yell behind. Grant clapped his hands over his ears.

“No. No. No.”

The hand on his back shifted and he was lost. There was a dull, fleshy sounding thump.

Grant ducked low and bolted between moving cars and honking buses, trying to find the darkest corner in the world.

“Squirrel!”

~*~

Flyboy’s baby brother -- Toby Logan, Paramedic -- crouched before him. “You back with me?”

Grant shifted further into the space between the dumpster and wall. It was tight but it wasn’t dark enough.

“It was noisy, wasn’t it,” Toby said. “And, wow, you can run fast, like a rabbit.”

“Squirrel,” Grant corrected.

Toby smiled and then snorted out a laugh. “It’s so weird. You’re thinking a mind storm. I can’t get any sense of you.” He held out his hand. “Come on, Squirrel.”

Slowly, Grant curled his fingers around Toby’s narrower span. He shuffled his way out of the little nook.

The walls curved above his head like a practical in Einstein’s physics. If he threw a ball against a wall, would the world’s spinning slow down? Grant hunched down away from their looming height.

“Hey?” Toby stooped down, head cocked to the side, trying to check his eyes.

Grant avoided him, peering up at the blue sky peeking out between the sentinel-like buildings. The warm fingers curled around his hand inched up and over his wrist.

“Grant, can you tell me where we are?”

The question was surprising. “Earth. North America. Canada. Toronto. Don’t you know?” Grant freed himself from Toby’s grip.

“Yes,” Toby said slowly, “I know.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Okay. We should try to get back to your friend, John.”

Grant shook his head. “No. It’s dangerous. The people. The Trust. The NID. The factions in the Government we don’t know about. That’s the United States, though. We’re in Canada, so maybe we’re okay? Perhaps we should find a Mountie, hmmm?”

“We could call John? Call him on your phone?”

Grant patted his chest, ensuring that his tricorder was safely secure in the breast pocket of his new coat.

“It’s not a phone. It’s my tricorder.”

Grant could see Baby Flyboy’s eyebrows rise out of the corner of his eye.

“Do you know his number?” Toby said as a tiny smile frittered on his lips.

“Yes.” Grant knew lots of numbers. He knew Flyboy’s identification tag, social security number, blood group… but he had never called Flyboy on a telephone. “We will have to call Rodney.”

“Who’s Rodney?”

“My cousin.” Shuffling a step away from Baby Flyboy, Grant curled his shoulder protectively as he retrieved his tricorder from his pocket.

“I thought that wasn’t a cell phone?”

“It’s not.” Grant double tapped the long side of the palm-sized rectangle and it unfolded like pages of a book. The right hand screen shimmered as it mapped out the wireless-enabled, easy to hack computers in the immediate vicinity. Grant tutted under his breath as he found a computer with only a firewall as security. He didn’t want a computer; he wanted the next level, the network flowing around them…

“Where the FUCK are you!” Rodney screamed -- his voice tinny over the network.

Grant was kind of disappointed that Rodney hadn’t enabled the holographic emitter, so there was no tiny, little Rodney -- al la Princess Leia -- balanced on the matrix screen berating him.

Grant enabled the GPS and overlaid a map of --

“Right, I know where you are!” Rodney was two steps ahead of him. “Why didn’t Carson chip Grant? That is a MASSIVE oversight. Grant, you’re going to be chipped. Stay where you are. I’m coming for you.”

“Whoa,” Toby said from behind Grant.

“Who’s that?” Rodney demanded.

“Baby Flyboy,” Grant said seriously. He held his tricorder over his shoulder, pointing it at Toby.

“What?”

Grant obediently enabled the zoom function and selected Baby Flyboy’s face.

“Who are you?” Rodney demanded. “Name. Now.” His fingers clicked.

“Toby. Toby Logan.”

“Date of birth?” Rodney ordered.

“Who are you?”

“Dr. Rodney McKay and you’re with my cousin. So tell me who you are and what’s your situation. Forget it. Daedalus, this is Rodney McKay--”

The flash of light at the end of the alley, on the other side of the dumpster was familiar to Grant, but Baby Flyboy jumped when Rodney emerged.

“That red headed lieutenant, Cobby -- whatever the Hell his name is -- reported you’d run off. Sheppard got hit by a car. He’s okay, but bruised from head to toe. Running off might have been a good idea, I wasn’t there. But taking over half an hour to check in -- is so not a good idea.” Rodney looked Baby Flyboy up and down. “Paramedic? Why didn’t you stay at the scene?”

“John was conscious, Lieutenant Hall was looking after him and--” he pointed slowly at Grant, “--was running off. John told me to stay with him. It happened very fast. How did you get here?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Rodney lifted his chin.

“Matter transporter?” he said incredulously. “Spaceship?”

Rodney’s focus went laser-sharp. “How do you know that?”

“Toby Logan, Paramedic, is a telepath,” Grant said helpfully.

Rodney straightened. “What type? You obviously receive, can you project?” he pulled out his life signs detector and pointed it at Toby Logan, Paramedic, waving it up and down to encompass his entire body.

“Human,” Rodney announced, looking at the screen. His eyes narrowed, calculating.

Grant nodded. “Baby Flyboy,” he said.

“Gene. Ancient?” Rodney asked. Not waiting for an answer, he tapped his ear piece. “Daedalus, three to beam up.”

~*~

Toby was having a very strange day and it was the definition of strange. His friend Oz was never going to believe this. And to be frank, if he told Oz, both he and his partner were going to be locked up in a cell for the rest of their natural lives.

His life had changed in one moment and -- like out of a novel -- was never going to be the same again. He rested his elbows on his knees and just sort of sagged into the moment. The hodgepodge of thoughts from different people around him all boiled down to one thing. He wasn’t going home. But John Sheppard, and his thoughts were a beacon of solidarity and protection, had a metaphorical arm over his shoulders. From the other side of the room, where John was lying on a long sofa with his bruised leg propped up on pillows, he turned his head and looked right at Toby.

 _::Sorry kid, but you’re on the radar. You’ve exploded on the radar. It wouldn’t be safe for you to go home. You’d be snatched by Men-in-Black before the end of the first day, along with all your friends::_

 _Atlantis?_ Toby asked.

 _::Is there any thing you don’t know?::_

Toby glanced meaningfully at Rodney McKay, who was stalking back and forth across the length and breadth of the hotel suite’s living room, berating the fifth person he had called up on his phone since they had beamed into the premier hotel in Toronto.

 _::Not really discreet, is he?::_

Toby wasn’t even listening to McKay’s thoughts – that was a little like surfing a tsunami. Basically, Rodney McKay’s audible conversations had boiled down to: No, he’s not going into the military, he’s a civilian; no, he’s not going to the IOA, he’s under the SGC’s jurisdiction; Medical is part of Science, so he’s my minion.

 _::Toby, you okay?::_

He was phlegmatic; he was a telepath and used to strange. He wanted to throw up. Before he had finished the thought, he bolted across the room and down the short corridor towards the bathroom.

“Stand down! Stand down!” John yelled, as Toby slammed through the door, dropped to his knees before the toilet bowl, and threw his guts up. It was brutal and horrible, and he let his forehead rest on the cold plastic seat when he’d finished. The sanitary label was still in place; at least he had thrown up in a clean basin. He spat into the water.

“Poor thing. Poor thing,” Grant said over him. A gentle hand gingerly patted him between his shoulder blades.

 _::Kid, you okay?::_ John asked. Grant patted his back staccato.

 _Fine._ For someone who professed to not be a telepath, the old guy seemed to get his head around telepathy quickly.

 _::I heard that; I’m not old::_

Toby rocked back on his heels. Grant mutely handed him a tumbler of water. He rinsed and spat.

“I stopped talking when they came for me,” Grant said abruptly, as he sat on the edge of the bath. “They put duct tape over my mouth and around my hands and put me in a box and nailed it shut. John came for me.”

Through the fractured kaleidoscope of Grant’s thought processes came a clear image of a shaft of light blinding him as a wooden lid was lifted – John and Dr. McKay looked down at him.

Grant smiled and then his thoughts became that impenetrable tornado.

“Are you finished?” Dr. McKay asked and tossed something from the doorway.

Automatically, Toby dropped the tumbler and caught the crystal ball. It lit up like a fluorescent bulb and he threw it away like it was hot.

“Knew it,” Dr. McKay said.

 _::Well, that was a given::_ John said conversationally.

 _What?_ The bulb lay quiescent on the ceramic tiled floor.

 _::Kid, it’s a long, long story::_

McKay’s arms were folded over his chest and he was glaring down at Toby. Grant offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. McKay cocked his finger drawing them back into the main living area.

John was sitting upright on the sofa, hands braced behind him. The watching military officers were no longer dotted around the room.

Grant was juggling the sphere, entranced by the sunlight sparkling within as he tossed it from hand to hand, lurching every now and again as he miss-threw. In his hands, though, it didn’t gleam with that glorious inner light.

 _::Only people with the Ancient gene can make them light up::_

 _Ancient gene? Is that why I’m a telepath?_

 _::Carson will be able to tell you::_

The image of a stocky, blue-eyed, white guy with an overlay of ‘kind’ came through as clear as crystal. And that was the way it was with John. There was no echo, resonance, confusing mishmash – words clear, images clear. John had already figured out how to just send what he wanted to send.

“Hey.” McKay clicked his fingers right in front of Toby’s nose.

Jerking back, he snapped, “Do you mind?”

McKay was narrow-eyed in calculation. “You’re talking to--” he turned to John, “--and you’re telepathing right back.”

“Is telepathing a word? I don’t think so.” John sagged back into his nest of cushions.

McKay’s glare inexplicably arrowed to Grant, who shuffled out of reach. “Baby Flyboy, eh? Sheppard, is this scrawny little paramedic your kid?”

John rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Flyboy didn’t have sex when he was fourteen.”

“Grant!” John yelped.

“Cousin? Baby brother. Who do you take after, Sheppard, your mother or your father? Mother. Carson’s identified that the Ancient genes -- not gene, plural -- are part of the X-chromosome. You’ve never really spoken about your mother. Did you ever speak telepathically with her? Is she still alive? Surely, Carson’s gene typed your entire family?”

“My mother is dead, McKay. She died when I was a baby,” John said flatly.

“Aunts?” McKay continued doggedly.

“Only child.”

“We need Carson. You could be second cousins.”

 _Is he always like this?_ Toby asked.

“Yes,” John replied and closed his eyes.

~*~

“I genuinely do not know,” John gritted out. The spikes of his aura forced Grant to the far corner of the room. Scrunching down, Grant distracted himself by sorting through the various interesting alien contraband that the Clone Doctor had brought in his medical kit.

“How can you not know!” Rodney demanded.

“My father never talked about her. He remarried when I was two, and nine months later my brother David arrived. She died. He said she died. Having me.” John launched an orange from the coffee table fruit basket at Rodney’s head.

Yelping, Rodney darted away.

“Serves you right!” The doctor’s accent was broad and almost unintelligible. He was ensconced at the dining room table with his laptop and the Ancient hand-held body scanner that he never let anyone from Rodney’s science group take apart. Grant had set himself just right so that he could see the screen on the doctor’s laptop compiling numbers and breaking them down into coloured block schematics.

“He could have killed me.”

“If I had meant to hit you, I would have hit you.” John flopped back on his pillows and closed his eyes.

Grant interfaced his tricorder with the Clone Doctor’s scanner just for the fun of it, and, he had to admit, curiosity. As he dabbled in the datasets, changing block schematics back into useful numbers, he chanced a glance at Baby Flyboy. He sat on the sofa opposite John, watching the proceedings with an expression that Grant couldn’t begin to read, but the translucent sharp edged spikes of his unease and discomfort matched John’s perfectly.

“My mom had dark curly hair. She kind of matches the photograph you remember,” Toby launched into the ether. He was deliberately not looking at Carson. John opened his eyes.

“Fuck. I don’t believe it. Carson?”

Sheepishly, Carson patted the edge of his laptop as if it was all the computer’s fault.

“Uhm, actually, the Siblingship Index indicates that you are probably siblings. The Ancient-enabled visual of the short tandem repeats sequences -- sharing of two alleles per locus -- I’m observing is fairly – uhm – conclusive. I need your mother’s and fathers’ DNA to run a more in depth maternity or paternity assessment. But--, Carson took a massive gulp of coffee, “the mitochondrial DNA hypervariable control regions that I’m scanning are –well, uhm, yes, Congratulations. John, meet your younger brother, Toby. Toby, allow me to introduce you to your big brother, John.”

“My mother died when I was a baby,” John said into the silence. “I’m fourteen years older than Toby.”

“Ancient genes on the X-chromosome are highly conserved. Admittedly, prone to rapid mutation, which I believe accounts for variability in phenotypic expression amongst tested, non-related individuals--”

“Carson, shut up. Please,” John said.

Grant ducked behind the doctor, who often seemed to upset people, and sought refuge in the joy of numbers.

“I had a baby brother,” Baby Flyboy announced. “When I ran. When the men came for me or my mom, or my brother. I don’t know. I was a kid, only five. I had a baby brother, they took him and my mom disappeared. I don’t even remember what they called him. My name was William.”

Grant set his chin against his chest. There were little blocks of numbers amidst reams and reams and streams of numbers. The common repeats glowed before his eyes. Streams and streams of numbers from John, from Baby Flyboy, General Jonathon – Jack – O’Neil, Evan Lorne, Clone Carson Beckett and his deceased progenitor. Grant cocked his head to the side and whistled a little tune. There were databases of DNA on Earth: criminal databases and military databases and medical databases.

Grant entered his search parameters and let the questions fly.

Their voices were loud; they were yelling. Data mining was much more fun. Grant found an interesting backdoor in the cyber ether through the Naval Criminal Investigative Services gateway to the Naval military DNA database register (or whatever the powers that be called it – Grant really didn’t care; he wanted the patterns) which rather nicely speeded up the processing power. He took a moment to investigate the code, realised in the space of a heartbeat that it was enabled by high spec-hardware and moved on into the servers.

“My father is dead, McKay!”

“Presumably there’s DNA material that we can extract.”

“Jesus!”

There were lots of data, hundreds and thousands of servicemen and women’s information catalogued and archived for the macabre eventuality of identification for a myriad of reasons.

 _Ping._

Grant sat back on his heels.

Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett, SEAL, Naval Reserves, currently on the Islands of Hawai’i, shared familial DNA with John Sheppard and Toby Logan.

This, Grant thought, was indeed getting exciting.

 **End part two**

 **Part three**

“It’s very green,” Rodney announced as he looked around the park.

“Yes, but no conifers,” John pointed out as he rocked from side to side, stretching out his newly healed hip. He loved Ancient technology. Toby turned in a circle, mouth open as he took in the green, open space.

“That makes a change,” Rodney noted. “Are they palm trees?”

“It smells nice.” Grant inhaled deeply. “Clean. Warm.” He lifted his face up to bask in the tropical sun.

“You know, this feels like an episode of Star Trek,” Rodney said.

“You mean beaming down into a park?” John asked. “Damn, we should have brought a puddlejumper and cloaked it.”

“Sir?” Cody folded his hands behind his back.

“Yes.” John focussed on matters to hand and took in his personnel. McKay, and all his glory. Grant, and all his idiosyncrasies. Efficient, drily humorous and practical Mehra. Phlegmatic and competent Cody. His baby brother –- Shit…

Toby raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything – verbally, or otherwise.

“Okay,” John said. “Mehra, walk into the city and book us a suite in a good hotel and rent an SUV. Take Grant and Toby with you. McKay and me are going to go find this McGarrett.”

“Me. Me. You need me,” Grant said, tapping his chest.

Rodney leaned over and flicked the edge of Grant’s tricorder making him jump back out of reach. “You know what to do. Find out everything. And, you, Busty--”

“Dusty,” the sergeant corrected.

“Dusty. Busty. Rusty. Whatever.”

“It’s important to get people’s names right, Doctor McKay,” Mehra said. “You could be in the middle of an operation and give someone the wrong name and wrong direction just because you’re not able to remember anyone’s names. Have you spoken to a doctor about this problem?”

“I choose to expend my considerable brain power on important things like figuring out how to build ZPMs instead of boring names.”

“Oh, the brain power’s limited?” Dusty smirked.

Rodney glowered.

“Forget it,” John ordered, stopping them. “Sergeant Mehra, book us into the Hilton.”

“Good choice,” Rodney said. “It has good Wi-Fi.”

“Okay, where are we?” John asked, derailing the two of them from starting again.

“Is that rhetorical?” Rodney snapped. “We’re in downtown Honolulu. In the park beside the Alo’iōlani Hale, the home of the Hawai’i State Supreme Court and, apparently, your other brother’s special task force headquarters.”

John did not preen.

“The SEAL has been arrested for murdering the Governor of Hawai’i,” Grant announced. “And someone else: Laura Hills.”

“What!”

Grant flinched back as everyone turned on him. Holding his tricorder at arm’s length, he pointed at it.

“It said it. Not me.”

John stepped right into Grant’s space. Bravely, Grant held firm, twisting his head away, looking over his shoulder, but keeping his arm outstretched to the fullest extent so that John could see the information. John gestured at the screen making the displayed page flip over. Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett had been arrested at the Governor’s mansion for the premeditated murder of Governor Patricia Jameson in the early hours of the morning. He was being held for processing at the Honolulu Police Department. Another member of McGarrett’s task force, Officer Kono Kalakaua, was under investigation from Internal Affairs.

“Is this all you’ve got?” John asked.

Still gazing determinably into the blue-blue Hawaiian sky, Grant said, “The firewalls around the task force’s servers are very good. I think that they might have purged a lot of information recently?”

“Okay, change of plan.” This has gone official, John realised. “Cody, Toby and I are going to the PD, but first we are going back to the Daedalus and smarten up. The US Air Force is going to visit the Naval Reserves. Rodney, Grant, Mehra, you need to suit up and use some governmental clout--”

“Governmental clout?” Rodney echoed.

“--to get into the task force offices and get all the information relevant to this case and everything that’s happened leading up to this situation.”

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t look at me like that,” John snapped.

“Fine!” Rodney unfolded his arms as fast as he had folded them, and tapped his ear comm. “Daedalus, six to beam back up.”

~*~

“Oh, very smart,” Rodney mocked as John stepped up onto the Daedalus’ teleport platform in service dress uniform. John held his service cap under his left arm and a blue folder in his other hand.

Toby trooped along at John’s heels wearing an enlisted airman’s less ostentatious version of service dress. Toby already wore his service cap on his head and John winced. Cody, equally smartly turned out, was studiously ignoring the breech in etiquette.

“You’re just jealous. Nice suit by the way,” John returned.

Rodney stroked the lapels of his Gucci suit flat. “How am I supposed to explain to the other members of your _brother’s_ task force that twins are hacking into their servers?”

“I’m sure that you’ll come up with something.” John stood straight. Cody stepped up behind him, taking the protective rear position. Toby bounced up onto the platform between them. The kid was extraordinarily passive, happy to coast along and just listen by the feel of it.

 _::I’ve been trying to find other telepaths since I was four. I’ve been looking for my family since I was five. I know you need me. And you’re not leaving me behind::_

“Rodney, just get into the task force offices and find out everything that you can about this case. Find out what really happened.”

“You know, just because you’re probably related to this McGarrett, doesn’t mean that he’s innocent.”

“I know, McKay. That’s why I’m taking the telepath with me.”

“I’m booking us into the penthouse suite at the Hilton, just so you know. Penthouse.”

“If that means that we don’t have to share a bathroom, I’m okay with that.” John smirked as a flare of energy spirited them away.

 

~*~

 _::How are we going to play this?::_ Toby asked.

John set his cap straight on his head and strode out of the alley. Cody was a protective, looming presence at his back. Toby came right into John’s personal space and he fought not to flinch. Toby read him instantly and backed off.

John held the blue folder up before Toby’s eyes. _Lieutenant Commander McGarrett has time sensitive information relating to an operation which is currently ongoing and we need to find out if it has been compromised. People’s lives are at risk. Signed and sealed by a general of the US Air Force._

 _::Sneaky. Why did a general agree to provide you with that?::_

 _Honestly?_

 _::Yes, ‘honestly’::_

 _Because if this guy is related to us -- given Carson’s research and Grant’s computer hacking, he probably is -- and has the Ancient genes, he’s an asset. Especially with his training, he’s an asset which can’t be lost. The US Government has already spent millions of dollars on him. The general can afford to give me carte blanche to figure out what’s happening. He’s just been accused of murder and he’s probably my--our brother and--_

 _::We have to figure out what’s happened::_

 _Yeah. Can you do that?_

Toby nodded. _::You know that I’ve been working with the Integrated Investigative Bureau, yeah?::_

“No, what’s that?” John stopped dead on the sidewalk and faced his _new_ little brother, making pedestrians dodge around them. Cody stepped to the side and waited patiently.

“It’s a special unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I’ve been sitting in on interrogations. If you ask probing questions and I listen, we can get to the bottom of this.”

“Like?”

The images which Toby projected were clear and concise, a PowerPoint slideshow of Toby with a blonde, tall female in a grey cell with bland walls and utilitarian furniture and criminal after criminal, pervert after psychopath, victim after innocent, sitting and unconsciously sharing their problems, their lies, their truths and worlds with Toby.

John’s stomach lurched. Toby reached out and caught his elbow.

 _::It hurt. I had to stop. I had to cut down. It was too much. But I can do it now::_

“Hurt?” John latched on to that.

“Sir, behind you,” Cody interrupted.

“Officers, do you mind?”

There was a woman in a motorised wheelchair. She couldn’t skirt around them.

“Sorry,” Toby apologised immediately, and drew John out of her way.

“Thank you.” She whizzed by.

“We need to go, see McGarrett. Come on,” Toby’s voice firmed, “John.”

“Yes.”

John strode out, determinedly, knowing that Toby and Cody followed behind. He took the steps up to the PD two at a time, long legs making it effortless. A cop coming out the double doors dodged to the side making way. Unconsciously, John determined that she was likely ex-Air Force or from another service. Inside the foyer was cool after the heat of mid-morning in the tropics. The desk sergeant, behind a protective glass partition, overseeing the normal morning chaos of active police department on any given day, merely glanced at them as they entered. John removed his service cap, tucked it under his elbow, and silently prompted Toby to take his own off.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, I’m here to see Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett, it’s a matter of national security.”

“What?” The round faced man asked.

John looked him up and down. “Now.”

~*~

 

John sat, folded hands resting on the plain metal table that was bolted to the floor. Cody and Toby stood behind him, backs to the wall -- subordinates awaiting orders. The tableau that John had set was one that he knew that a fellow military officer would expect to see under such circumstances: officer being faced with criminal charges.

The man who was probably his brother was frogmarched in handcuffs into the interrogation room and dumped in the chair opposite. John guessed that he and McGarrett were probably the same height, but McGarrett had some weight on him, and it looked like it was all toned, lean muscle. Ronon could probably take him in a fight, but it would be a close thing.

The two escorting cops ducked out of the interrogation room without a backwards glance.

McGarrett blinked at him, blearily registered the uniform and then straightened. “Sir?”

“Are you hungover?” John asked looking into bloodshot eyes.

“No.” He craned his neck, showing two burnt and weeping wheals on his neck. “I was tasered with what was probably an X30 with no cut off.”

“Has any one seen to those?” Toby asked, moving forwards. Cody caught his elbow.

“Logan,” John chastised and backed it up with a: _back off, he could break you in half without thinking about it._

McGarrett grimaced and rubbed at his temple. He squinted at John’s ribbon rack. “I’m fine. Why are you here, Lieutenant Colonel--?”

“Sheppard, John Sheppard.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, why are you here?”

“Did you kill the governor?”

“No, it was Wo Fat!” McGarrett slammed his joined fists into the table. “And if any one was following any sort of procedure, they would have processed my gloves and figured out that there was no gunshot residue on them or my sleeves and figured out that I hadn’t fired the damn weapon!”

He yelled that at the two way mirror dominating the far wall.

John struggled to maintain a neutral expression as a skewed, lurching image, coloured by pained disorientation, showed an Asian guy shooting an older, elegant white woman directly in the chest.

 _He didn’t do it?_

 _::He didn’t do it::_ Toby confirmed.

McGarrett grimaced again and rubbed at his temple.

“Why did Wo Fat kill the governor?”

“Because he’s a manipulative bastard, responsible for killing my father and my mother, and he wants to torture me and get me out of the way as something big goes down!”

“Why didn’t he kill you?” John said.

“What part of torture didn’t you get?”

“Responsible for killing your father and was involved in your mother’s death?” Toby asked.

“Who are you guys, really?” McGarrett demanded.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. Lieutenant Cody Hall and Corporal Toby Logan.”

“Yeah, I got that. You’re a Lieutenant Colonel or some kind of military despite that hair. But he’s not.” McGarrett glared at Toby. “And that still doesn’t answer why you’re here.”

“The US government has a vested interest in you. And--”

“Your behavioural psyche profile makes it unlikely that you committed this murder despite your belief that Ms. Jameson may have been involved in your father’s death,” Toby blurted.

“Get me the Hell out of here,” McGarrett said bluntly.

“I’m working on it.” John stood up, pushing the chair back. “Have they got you in solitary confinement or the general populace?”

“You don’t know much about police, do you? I haven’t been officially charged; I have my own cell.”

“I need to talk to my associates. You’ll be out of here before the end of the day.”

“You need to find my partner, Daniel Williams, and Kono Kalakaua. Chin Ho Kelly, who is probably waiting outside, can help you. I don’t know what Wo Fat is up to, but they’re in danger. Kono’s probably off his radar, he’s already engineered her suspension from the Honolulu PD, but he might be planning something for Danny.”

“I need a DNA sample.” John pulled out the buccal swab kit that Carson had given him. The files on the Naval database were good, but they needed a live sample to figure out who, exactly, Steven McGarrett was to them.

“Why?” McGarrett didn’t pick up the plastic tube with its cotton bud.

“Commander.” John was in control here.

Mulishly, McGarrett snapped the seal, stuck the bud in his mouth, wiggled it around and mashed it back in the tube. He set the tube down, flicked his finger and fired it across the table top right into John’s waiting hand.

“Get me out of here, Colonel.”

“Logan, Hall, with me.” _Phew_. John got out of that tiny, hot room. There was a man waiting on the other side of the door with the most sculptured cheekbones that John had ever seen. If you had seen this man once, you would be able to pick him out of a crowd of thousands; he had that kind of quality.

“Chin Ho Kelly?” John asked.

He nodded, once. Unreadable.

“McGarrett said that you could help. Who are you?”

“I am a member of Hawaii 5-0, the ex-governor’s task force, headed up by Steve.”

“Steve, eh?” And John could hear an echo of Rodney’s Canadianism in his own voice. “Have Commander McGarrett’s BDUs been processed by forensics? Has any gun shot residue been found on his gear?”

“The resident forensic specialist, M.E. Dr. Bergman, has just come in. He has Steve’s clothes,” Chin said solidly.

“You need to get a doctor to check out Mr. McGarrett. I mean Commander McGarrett,” Toby said. “He’s been stunned using a taser and has two second degree burns on his neck. They need to be treated, but their bruising and development can also give you a time line.”

A bare flicker of restrained concern crossed Chin Ho Kelly’s face. “I’ll get on it.”

“A moment.” John stopped him before he headed off down the grey corridor. “You know McGarrett well?”

“I’m his friend,” Chin said, suddenly no longer inscrutable. “I’ve known him since he was a kid.”

“Who is Wo Fat?” John asked.

Phlegmatically, Chin checked the corridor for anyone overhearing. “High up in the Yakuza, if not the Head of the Yakuza operations in the US.”

 _Yakuza?_ “Why so interested in McGarrett?”

“Which one? He’s been playing with the family for decades.”

John was thinking at the speed of light. Why the Hell would a member of a criminal syndicate be interested the McGarretts? And if Steven McGarrett was a thorn in his side, why not kill him, instead of framing him for the Governor’s murder? Because this Wo Fat wanted McGarrett contained, but not dead. Why?

 _Toby, did he hear us?_

 _::Possibly. He winced when I was listening::_

“Where will I find Daniel Williams?”

~*~

“Put down that Python Super Computer XII table,” Rodney barked. “Carefully!”

The two Honolulu Police officers froze.

“You drop that and you’ll be responsible for upwards of a million US dollars of equipment,” Rodney snapped. “You can’t honestly think that two, obviously newly graduated, skinny rookie police officers can lift and carry that out of this building.”

A short, stocky blond barrelled through the double doors behind them, forcing Grant to scurry out of his cannonball-like path.

“Put that down!” he screamed at the two officers.

“Jesus. Bob, put it down,” the darker, skinnier one said.

“We’ve been told to clear the building, Keahi,” his taller Caucasian partner retorted, but slowly lowered the black computer table back to the floor.

Keahi jerked his head at the blond, impressively ignoring Rodney, Grant noted.

“Listen to your partner, kid. And get out of my offices, now!” The blond pointed with his entire body at the exit.

The boys balked.

“I am still a member of this task force and no member of the government has told me that this task force has been disbanded. I outrank you; so get the Hell of here!”

They bolted.

Full of piss and vinegar and fair face flushed, the stranger turned on Rodney.

“You too. Out.” He jabbed a finger at the swinging double doors.

Rodney looked him up and down and then consulted the datapad in his hand. “You, I assume, are Detective Daniel Williams.”

“Who the Hell are you?”

“Doctor Rodney McKay, this is Grant McKay, we’re here to carry out a forensic audit of your computers and hard drives.”

“And you brought your twin brother?” Detective Williams returned scathingly.

“And why is that a problem? You have a problem with brothers working together?” Rodney pushed past him. “Look at those idiots. They didn’t even unplug the cabling. They just lifted up the table. Grant.”

Grant gave the detective a wide berth. Crouching down, he checked and then tucked the cables back. Rodney was already interfacing his data tablet with the larger data table.

“Stop it,” the blond demanded again.

“No.” Rodney twisted on his heel and directly faced the angry man. “We are scientists. We’re impartial. We’re going to weigh the evidence and ascertain Commander McGarrett’s innocence or guilt. You want us here.”

The detective clicked his fingers. “ID, now.”

Eyes narrowed, Rodney fished out his leather ID folder. He tossed it at the detective. Grant shivered. The little man was angry; it skittered over his skin, vortices of pain, fury and rage. Grant could only glimpse at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Air Force civilian consultant?” the detective shrieked. Everything about him was penetratingly sharp.

“Impartial!” Rodney snapped back at him. “Here at the Navy’s request to investigate Lieutenant Commander McGarrett. Forensic computer audit!”

They really needed Flyboy as the voice of reason, Grant thought, because Rodney and Detective Daniel Williams were fire and fire and the conflagration could only increase. Grant jumped as his tricorder rang, startling him. The dark shadow under the table beckoned and he ducked into its security. The phone continued to ring, a low reassuring tone. And knowing that it was John, because only he had the number, Grant answered. The battle above his head went on unabated.

“Hullo,” he said.

“What the Hell is that noise?”

“Rodney has met Detective Daniel Williams and they are…”

“Shouting at each other,” Flyboy supplied.

Grant nodded, even though he knew that John couldn’t see him. He reached up and tugged Rodney’s data tablet off the tabletop and onto his knees. The systems had all ready integrated allowing Grant full access.

“Toby read McGarrett; he’s innocent.”

“He’s your brother,” Grant returned confused.

“So that means that he’s innocent?” Flyboy said, humour evident. “So what have you got, Grant?”

“Someone has attempted to delete all the information on the Hawaii 5-0 task force servers but they used--” Grant wrinkled his nose, “--Windows. They didn’t even try.”

“So you have access to everything,” Flyboy said unnecessarily. “Concentrate on any information about a Wo Fat – that’s Whisky Oscar – next word -- Foxtrot Alpha Tango. Active in the Yakuza. He’s been targeting the McGarrett family for years. He was responsible for McGarrett’s mother’s death in 1992.”

“But,” Grant began.

“Yes, Toby’s younger than McGarrett. Carson has McGarrett’s buccal swab, so he can figure out how we’re all related.” John paused for a long breath. “But I want answers.”

“Cuckoos?” Grant offered.

The silence was much longer this time. “Jesus, Grant.”

Grant pursed his lips and stared at the phone. He had lots of ideas, but perhaps he shouldn’t share all of them? He especially liked the idea that Flyboy, Paramedic and the SEAL were Faerie changelings.

“Grant, look at the data, and keep Detective Williams there until I get there.” The noise above his head continued unabated. It actually seemed that Rodney might have met his match. Surely they would run out of air at some point?

Grant tuned them out.

There were several basic inconsistencies in the files and folders before Grant that were really bothering him: the equipment around him was state of the art, the code that he was interfacing with was neat and orderly and had no extraneous tangents. An expert worked regularly on this system, and the digital finger prints all over the work belonged to Chin Ho Kelly of the H5-¬0 task force. A coder of this skill would not have simply deleted the information; it would have been an insult to his skill set.

Therefore, what Grant had retrieved was smoke and mirrors – false information. He drummed his fingers against the side of his data tablet and dove into the servers.

~*~

It was well hidden, but hidden was fine. Lots of lovely organised folders with files, mpegs, jpegs and information. There were really three strands -- evidence pertaining to:

1\. Death of Mrs. John McGarrett.  
2\. Death of Mr. John McGarrett, not limited to,  
3\. Current operations of Wo Fat and the Yakuza on the Islands of Hawai’i, the Mainland and Asia.

The third strand was a conglomeration of Mr. John McGarrett’s information, H5¬-0 task force evidence and gigabytes of data from a CIA analyst called Jenna Kaye. The information was well hidden, which spoke of its authenticity, but it was very important to separate fact from fiction. Luckily, he had found multiple back ups -– Chin Ho Kelly was very diligent -– both on site and off site.

However, the compilers of this data were hardly objective.

The fourth strand: Lieutenant Commander SEAL’s involvement in the death of the governor and Ms. Laura Hills, was inconsistent and incomplete. Vaguely nauseated by the gaps, Grant concentrated on the first three strands. Flyboy, Paramedic, The Mouth and Rodney could focus on the fourth strand.

“What’re you doing?”

Someone was talking at him. Grant held up his hand protectively by the side of his face, blocking out The Mouth. Where was Rodney? Perhaps The Mouth had eaten him?

“Leave him alone, Detective Williams,” Rodney barked.

“What is he doing?”

“Finding evidence to exonerate your McGarrett.”

Grant shrugged, he wasn’t doing that, but he wasn’t going to tell Rodney or The Mouth. Flyboy said the SEAL was innocent – it was a waste of his time to concentrate on that, and the state of the data -- _ewwwwww._

“Chin deleted the files.”

Both Rodney and Grant snorted identically. Grant could imagine Rodney waving his hands at the tech around the office.

“The back ups and redundancies in this system would make deleting information practically impossible,” Rodney said. “You would have to carry out a full overwrite of all media and to be sure you’d have to destroy the hard drives. Lab degaussing to scrub the data from the drive platter followed, ideally, by a sledge hammer. I don’t imagine that you had time to even overwrite the data, and you obviously haven’t destroyed the hardware, in between McGarrett running and then killing your Governor.”

“He didn’t--”

“Yadda yadda ya…”

And they were off again. Grant bunkered down. The third strand of compiled information was giving him the heebie jeebies. The degree of order in the repeat patterns was sequential. Grant opened the files. They were a selection of photos of Asian men and one Caucasian woman entering a hotel. Another set of one man, who Grant had identified as Wo Fat, in a variety of situations. Two scanned pages of CIA stamped foolscap, evidence from 1985 and 1989, looked interesting. Grant zoomed in on the beige pages. Curiously, they had the same embedded time stamp.

“Hello?”

The problem with hiding under tables, unlike air vents, was that there were too many approaches for people to get to him.

The girl-woman crouched down beside him was disconcertingly bland in appearance, visage and aura. Grey from head to toe.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

There were too many people in this office to work. Grant crawled out from under the table. He jack-in-the-boxed-up beside Rodney.

“I can’t work like this. Can’t. Too many people. Tell them to leave. Leave. Okay?”

“It’s okay, Grant. This is Daniel Williams and Jenna Kaye, they’re with the task force.”

“No. No. No.” Grant shook his head and fixated on his navy-blue gym shoes with their brilliant white piping.

“Come on.” Rodney swung an arm over his shoulders. “McGarrett’s office is empty, you can work in there.”

“No way,” The Mouth immediately protested. “I’m not letting him--”

“Uh, uh.” Rodney tapped his own chest twice and then pointed at the blond. “You and me going at it like Rock ‘Em and Sock Em’ Robots is kind of invigorating, but Grant is off limits. McGarrett does not need his office. Grant does.”

Flyboy breezed through the double doors, ribbons a bright slash of colour on his chest, cap tucked under his left elbow. Grant thought that he looked like a character from a movie, and that Flyboy knew what image he was projecting. Jenna Kaye sighed audibly and then blushed.

“Glad to see you’re all getting on fine. Not.” John’s eyebrow rose.

The Mouth shuddered and went for the metaphorical jugular. “More uniforms. Who the Hell are you?”

John cocked his head to the side. “I’m Colonel Sheppard, Detective Williams.”

“What of?”

“US Air Force,” John drawled.

“Insane. You should have sent the Navy. He’s Navy. He’s a God damn SEAL.”

“Lieutenant Commander McGarrett has potential input to ongoing, sensitive operations affecting Air Force and, potentially, Navy operations,” John said smoothly. “We’re here to find out what happened.”

Grant’s mouth fell open; that was an impressive piece of obfuscation.

“So.” Flyboy’s gaze took them all in. “What have you found?”

“The third strand of information is odd. Inconsistent.” Grant shook his head from side to side. “I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Who is this dweeb?” The Mouth demanded.

“The guy that you want trawling through your data to figure out everything you need to know about this Wo Fat guy and the Governor’s death,” John said.

“No. No. Four strands. Number One: Death of Mrs. John McGarrett. Number Two: Death of Mr. John McGarrett, not limited to, Number Three: Current operations of Wo Fat and the Yakuza on the Islands of Hawai’i, the Mainland and Asia and then Number Four: Lieutenant Commander SEAL’s involvement in the death of the governor and Ms. Hills. I don’t like the fourth strand. It’s very confusing.”

“Hey.” Flyboy ducked down a fraction so that he could catch Grant’s eyes. “Come on. You can’t ignore the Fourth Strand, just because you don’t like it. We need hard evidence to clear Commander McGarrett. Are there similarities about what’s bothering you in your Third and Fourth strands?”

“No. Fill in the gaps. Fill in the gaps,” Grant echoed.

“Rodney, can you help him?”

“I’m hardly an assistant. We will work together.” Under the sheltering arc of Rodney’s arm, Grant let himself be directed him into a blissfully quiet, well-lit office.

 

~*~

“Mother load,” Rodney hollered in gleeful singsong.

John hauled himself off McGarrett’s office couch, mindful of his tender hip. Ancient tech was awesome, but there was a little bit of residual ache after sitting still for too long.

“What have you got?”

Rodney grinned up at him from where he sat opposite Grant looking like identical bookends on either side of McGarrett’s desk.

“That reminds me,” Rodney said, apropos of nothing, “what happened to Coby?”

“Toby and Cody,” John said, rolling his eyes, “are at the Honolulu PD. Chin Ho Kelly said that there was… possibly a mole in the department. Toby wanted to hang around and listen.”

“Sounds inefficient and aggravating,” Rodney mused.

John shook his head. “What. Have. You. Found?”

Dramatically, Rodney lifted his finger high and then stabbed it down on his laptop, hitting the return key.

A woman’s voice controlled, with an edge of fear, filled the room. John started to speak, but Rodney shushed him, as McGarrett spoke -- demanding a confession and answers. John’s ears pricked up as the woman -– John guessed it was the Governor –- slyly stated that McGarrett did not want answers. McGarrett tersely laid out the timeline of events leading to both his mother and father’s death. Then Rodney’s mother load: a flat recitation where Patricia Jameson calmly admitted organising the murder of her disloyal assistant, Laura Hills. The harsh arc of discharging lightning and the thump of a body hitting a carpet heralded the end of the recording.

“What was that?” Grant asked innocently.

“McGarrett being knocked unconscious,” John interpreted.

“It’s not proof, though,” Detective Williams said from the doorway. “Just sounds. It could be Ms. Jameson being tasered.”

“Why would The SEAL tape himself murdering Ms. Jameson?” Grant said without raising his chin, intent on his own searches through the systems. “He programmed his own phone to record the conversation on H5-0 servers, accessible and backed up.”

“But once the gun shot residue on McGarrett’s BDUs comes back negative and medical documents the taser burns on his neck, I think that we’re getting into the realm of reasonable doubt.” John glanced at the detective.

Williams stood a little taller, a little straighter. “We still don’t know why, though.”

“Yeah.” And that niggled at John.

“Chin’s back at the governor’s mansion with the forensic specialist, Bergmann,” Williams said. “They’re looking at the governor’s office, especially her desk. Hopefully they’ll find something there.”

“What’s an asset forfeiture locker?” Rodney asked, rewinding the tape and listening to the Governor again.

Williams shuffled; it was the first nervous tick that John had seen since meeting the man.

“Chin got kidnapped by Hesse, the guy who killed Steve’s dad. We needed ten million ransom.” His sentences were staccato. “We couldn’t get it anywhere, so we borrowed it from the asset forfeiture locker which is where the police store confiscated drug money. The plan was to put it back when we’d rescued Chin. Hesse burnt the ransom money. We thought that we were fucked, but ten million reappeared back in the locker.”

“So the governor put the money back? Out of her own pocket?” Rodney asked incredulously. “Why?”

“Something’s going down,” Grant said with his typical, total detachment.

“What!” Williams pounced, bouncing forward a step.

“Hey, stop!” Rodney snapped out and Williams froze.

Grant kept his head down, flinching into a tighter ball. “Kill three birds with one stone. Stop H5-0 from interfering with his operations. Lock down The SEAL. The SEAL was unconscious on the floor; Mr. Wo Fat could have shot him dead.”

“And he didn’t, when it would be so much easier.” Williams tugged at his bottom lip, deep in thought.

Grant nodded. “And murder the Governor.”

“Why did Wo Fat murder the governor?” Williams asked.

“She was laundering Yakuza money through the Islands and siphoning off more than five percent this last year. Sometimes up to eight percent. Previously she only took zero point one percent. Million of US dollars. Billions of Yen. Getting ready to run. Wo Fat is planning a sensitive operation -- threatened the Governor’s position -- she was going to take her _ill gotten gains_ and run. Today. Tomorrow. This weekend,” Grant continued, musingly. “But I might be wrong.”

John crouched down by Grant’s side, forgetting his hip. “What operation? Do you know? McGarrett thought that something was going down as well.”

Grant shook his head. “Person. Thing. Coming through the Islands? Too big to hide. Too likely to be found? Big Bomb? Terrorism? Terrorist? Terrorists? A cell.”

“How?” Williams whispered.

“Boat. Wo Fat likes boats.” Grant nodded at his screen. “Statistically more likely to use ground transport if the material he’s transporting is organisationally or politically motivated. Hmmm, if the data’s right. Hmmm.”

“This is ridiculous,” Williams snapped. “You’re just pulling this stuff out of midair. How the Hell can the governor be working with Wo Fat? Why did she create the task force if she was working with the Yakuza?” Williams asked. “You’ve got some good ideas but others? Suck.”

John tapped the edge of Rodney’s laptop thinking. “She wanted the task force to succeed. That’s why she put the money back in the asset forfeiture locker.”

“Because,” Williams jumped in, “she wanted Steve to succeed; to bring down Wo Fat so she could get away scot free.”

The words hung between them, the complex strands of a story unfurling.

“We might not have all the answers, but I think we’ve got enough to talk to the police,” John said into that void.

“Shit,” Williams said eloquently. Abruptly, he held his hand out. “Okay, this is what we’re doing. Steve’s going before the judge in a couple of hours. We need to go before the judge with the audio file. You, mouthy guy--”

“Me? Mouthy guy?” Rodney said, aghast.

“McKay,” Williams corrected, “can come and explain it in words of less than one syllable to the judge, who’s a moron, honest and non-judgmental, but he needs everything explained slowly. Bergman has the gun shot residue stuff. And maybe something from the governor’s office? We should be able to get bail – it’s going to be astronomical, but we should be able to get it. The other stuff, can you explain that?”

McKay tapped his chest. “Me? Grant’s supposition? Yes, it’s subjective, but probable.”

“Good, you’re definitely coming. Get your computers, anything you need.” Williams was already moving.

“Detective, hold up,” John ordered. “I’m coming with.”

“Why?”

“Bail money,” John said succinctly. Still crouched, he lightly tapped the side of the laptop that Grant had acquired. “Grant?”

“Hmmm?” he hummed absently, fingers dancing over the keyboard.

“Dusty is going to stay with you. Firm up your _hypothesis_ \--” as expected John saw a tiny grin flitter over Grant’s face, “--and check out Commander McGarrett’s mom’s death.”

Grant stuck his tongue into his cheek, making it round out, even as he kept his gaze on the screen. “You need to talk to the Clone Doctor. Lots of things to do. Need to know if she is your mom before spending time on that. Eh?”

“WHAT! You’re Steve’s brother!” Williams grabbed John’s shoulder and yanked him to his feet. “What? Is that why you’ve come here? You were lying when you said that you were Air Force. Who the Hell are you?”

“Back off, Detective!” John straight-armed him away.

“Impartial investigation? Yeah, right,” Williams snapped, bouncing right back into John’s personal space.

“I was gene-typed and cross referenced on US Air Force, Army and Navy databases. Lieutenant Commander McGarrett was identified as a possible gene match. Our gene type is relevant to specific and ongoing operations necessary for domestic and international security,” John said directly. “There is some confusion as to how we are related, since as far as I am aware my mother died when I was a baby.”

“How the Hell can genie-types be important?” Williams demanded.

“We’re not at liberty to say,” Rodney interjected. “It’s classified. But if the White Knight here thinks your McGarrett is his baby brother, he’s going to go to the end of the galaxy to make sure he’s okay.”

“McKay!” John squalled.

Williams snorted. “Baby brother? Hah!”

“Oh no, don’t tell me: Another over-protective idiot that thinks that he has to look after everyone.” Rodney’s eyes rolled heavenward.

“McKay, shut up.” John stared down at the shorter man. “Detective Williams, suffice to say we were interested in McGarrett before this shit-fest started. McGarrett did not kill the Governor, and we have to prove that. And yes, I’m not impartial. But that’s what my team’s here for, because I’m guessing that McGarrett will want his innocence proven absolutely one hundred percent without doubt.”

“Suffice? You actually said suffice,” Rodney mocked.

“Shut up, McKay. Seriously, this is turning out to be a really long day. You have no idea.” John breathed out harshly. “This is how we’re going to play this. McKay, get your equipment, so you can explain to the judge what we’ve found so far. Detective, we’re going to go to McGarrett’s place and get his dress uniform and dopp kit, because he’s going to want to go before the judge, clean and respectful. I’m going to pay McGarrett’s bail, and then we’re all going to bunker down and figure out what this damn Wo Fat’s up to, and exonerate McGarrett and throw Wo Fat’s ass in jail.”

John wanted his subordinates, team members and mouthy detectives to simply heed his orders and obey; but it was like herding proverbial cats. They all stood looking at him.

“Come on!” John chivvied. “We’re leaving now.”

“Fine,” Detective Williams growled. “But I’m driving. You’ll wait in the car while I get Steve’s kit.”

“I’ll stay.” A woman, who John hadn’t even noticed, gingerly held her hand up. “I’ll help Grant with his interrogation of the databases.”

“Yeah, good idea, Jenna,” Williams said. “This is Jenna Kaye, CIA-analyst. She put together a lot of the data your dude is looking at.”

“I can be a lot of help,” she said brightly.

“Yeah, okay, help Grant. But if he wants some space give it to him.” John glanced down at Grant who was ignoring them. “Grant? Grant? Earth to Grant?”

That garnered a response. “I’m on Earth.”

John fished out the ear piece from his breast pocket and waved it in front of Grant’s nose. “You hooked up?”

Grant nodded enthusiastically. “Always. I’m part of the ‘net.”

John poked the receiver in his ear and gave it a double tap. “Hey, Carson, you there?”

The communication delay between the Daedalus in geosynchronous orbit was non-existent despite being 40, 000 km above the Earth.

“Dr. Beckett is at the SGC, rerouting your signal,” a quiet, competent voice said.

“Aye?” Carson said subliminally a second later.

“The results?” John drawled.

“Oh, yes, of course. Uhm.” Carson coughed.

“Carson!” John said through gritted teeth.

“Statistically. Yes, you’re related. Brothers. Same maternal DNA. Congratulations?” he finished weakly.

 **End part three**

 **Part four**

Rodney was, in fact bored. He was beyond bored and he really didn’t like being bored. The totally stereotypically eccentric forensic examiner had both confused and bamboozled the ancient judge – lower case ancient as in old, rather than Ancient – until the defence lawyer supplied by the Air Force painstakingly made Dr. Bergman reiterate that McGarrett had not fired any weapons. Rodney just thought that it was a minor miracle that McGarrett had been wearing brand new BDUs, because if they’d tested John’s for gunshot residue, he probably would have glowed in the dark.

Rodney’s own recitation has been logical, erudite and straight forward; he had only had to repeat it twice.

There was some sort of ongoing discussion by the bench where the judge sat, which Rodney tuned out. He ignored them, because, frankly he couldn’t add anything to the debate between the judge, defence and offence (Rodney thought that might not be the right term, but he hated watching ‘Law and Order’ on team television nights because it was too depressing). The wall of uniformed officers –- Sheppard, McGarrett and Cody -- standing at parade rest, staring implacably at the judge as he made his decision, were resoundingly threatening in a way which, impressively, couldn’t be called on.

Detective Williams and an Asian guy, who after a quick check through the H5-0 Human Resources page, Rodney identified as Chin Ho Kelly, were sitting on the opposite side of the court room. They were an intent, glowering wall of police intimidation.

Toby blew out his cheeks and sighed heavily. He had taken off his suit jacket and tie and was slumped beside Rodney on the hard wooden bench.

“You look pale and sweaty,” Rodney noted, and shifted away, “are you ill?”

“Headache, I get them. Do you have any acetaminophen?”

“Is that from overusing your telepathy?”

Toby’s eyes widened. Rodney guessed it was because he wasn’t used to casual acknowledgment of his telepathy.

“What?” Rodney asked. “It’s a reasonable question. Presumably, it involves a great deal of biochemical processing in the brain. It’s quite fascinating, actually.”

“Acetaminophen?” Toby prodded.

Rodney rooted in his laptop bag and fished out a bottle of pain pills and tossed them over. Toby cracked the child-proof cap and swallowed two down dry.

“Thanks.” He made to hand them back, but Rodney shook his head.

“You should talk to Carson. You wouldn’t believe the progress that the SGC has made in medical technology. Trick is to not end up as one of his nefarious medical experiments. Kidding. Well, not quite. But he’s learned his lesson. Keep quoting the Hippocratic Oath at him; it usually stops the more insane experiments. And he’s not fond of experimenting with gene manipulation anymore.”

“Unreal,” Toby said flatly.

Rodney shrugged. “Welcome to the SGC.”

There was some sort of commotion by the podium and the annoying detective vaulted over the barrier and flung himself into McGarrett’s arms, yelling, “I knew it, Babe.”

“Huh,” Rodney smacked his lips together. “I didn’t know it was like that.”

Toby glanced at him blearily, finger rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you okay?” John was there standing over them, eying a pale and wan Toby.

“Baby Flyboy,” Rodney said with an edge of mocking, “has a headache. I’m thinking Carson.”

“It looks more like a migraine. Good Idea. Cody.” He beckoned his junior officer over. “Get Toby out of here and to Carson. Tell Carson that Toby mentioned before that his skill set can hurt him.”

“I’m not leaving.” Toby shot up impulsively and wobbled alarmingly, which shot his protestation in the foot.

John caught his elbow. “Carson’s the best doctor in the galaxy; he can help you.”

“Assuming that he’s doesn’t make you grow an extra head,” Rodney quipped.

Toby’s expression could only be described as horrified.

“Give it a rest, McKay,” John said. “Carson’s a great doctor. Cody?”

“Yes, sir.” Cody saluted precisely. “Mr. Logan, if you would come with me.”

Toby let himself be conducted out of the court room. John rubbed tiredly at his face. Rodney felt a small degree of sympathy, but he liked coffee and had had a triple shot, grande latte with hazelnut syrup, so any ‘Gate and jet lag was masked behind a veil of caffeine and sugar.

“What has Danny just told me?” A Ronon-sized McGarrett stormed over. Well, on reflection -- as he and John went head to head –- Rodney realised that McGarrett was the same height as John, but exuded palpable threat.

John had, however, faced down Wraith Queens.

“I don’t know what Detective Williams has told you,” John drawled. “I’m not a telepath.”

Rodney coughed into his fist.

McGarrett didn’t react to the bait. Thumb jerking over his shoulder at his partner, he growled. “He says we’re related. You and me.”

“That’s what I wanted the DNA test for. See if we were. And according to every test the Air Force has, we are.”

“You can’t run them in less than twenty-four hours,” McGarrett said suspiciously.

“We can,” John said implacably. “New tests. New technology.”

McGarrett blew out a sigh and clapped a hand over his mouth, rubbing at his clean shaven cheeks.

“It gets more complicated, but this isn’t the place to discuss it,” John said. “Let’s get past the blood sucking reporters outside and discuss this somewhere private.”

McGarrett’s eyes narrowed. Rodney noticed that they were a curious shade of hazel, which matched John’s, but there was also a lot of blue in them like Toby Logan’s – no doubt Carson would be fascinated.

“We’ll go back to H5-0 headquarters,” McGarrett ordered. Back to my place, back to my space, he didn’t say, but that’s what he meant.

~*~

The H5-0 task force main office had been ransacked.

“What the fuck!” Williams rushed into the work space, looking left, looking right. Hardware had been tipped over. The big screen which had been on the east wall was a shattered pile on the floor. The computer data table in the centre of the room had a piece of rebar smashed through the centre like Excalibur in the stone.

“Who did this?” McGarrett demanded.

“More to the point, where’s Grant!” Rodney shrieked.

“And Jenna. And your Marine?” Williams countered.

John stalked forward. The hairs on the back of his neck were crawling. There was someone still in here, someone on their last legs. He un-holstered his P14-45, extended it at arm’s length and ghosted silently towards the source of his unease.

“You got a spare?” McGarrett whispered by his side.

John unclenched long enough to fish out his Beretta 92FS and hand it over. Behind them, Williams and Rodney shut up. There was a momentary scuffle as Williams bodily wrenched Rodney down behind the data table.

Together, John and McGarrett skirted the perimeter of the room, heading towards McGarrett’s office. John peered through the open windows. Dusty lay in the centre of the room, a glistening pool of blood along her side.

“High,” McGarrett said.

“Low,” John responded, he slid into the office ahead of McGarrett who kept an eye on the whole area. He knelt at Dusty’s side. She was unconscious but breathing, low, rapid breaths and there was a thready, ropey pulse at her throat.

John cast a glance at McGarrett, made the right decision and then tapped his comm. “Daedalus, this is Colonel Sheppard. Lock onto Sergeant Mehra’s subcutaneous transmitter and get her to the SGC infirmary. She’s been shot in the abdomen.”

The beam-up lights swirled and Dusty was spirited away.

McGarrett blinked twice and then, impressively, said, “We need to clear the rest of the offices.”

John slowly rose to his feet.

“Holy Cow!” A young athletic woman burst into the main office, Chin Ho Kelly on her heels.

“We need to clear the area,” McGarrett barked. “We’re looking for two potential victims, someone called Grant, and Jenna, plus possible perps.”

Chin Ho Kelly already had his weapon out and was casing the area. The woman, John guessed she was Kono Kalakaua, bobbed down and plucked a compact gun from her ankle holster.

“Will you stay under the table, Mr. Civilian, while we clear the area!” Williams shouted at Rodney.

“I’ve seen more action than you have, Blondie,” Rodney retorted.

“Shut up!” John and McGarrett yelled simultaneously.

The department was clear; not a soul present. They cased every office, every nook and cranny. Surveying the devastation in the main room, John closed his eyes for a heartbeat. Damn. Grant…

“They’ve taken Grant. Your Wo Fat has taken Grant.” Rodney was poised to jab McGarrett in the chest. Abruptly, John intercepted him, tucking a hand down the back of his pants and yanking him back.

“He’s not my Wo Fat,” McGarrett snapped.

“Yeah, right, he’s been intimately involved in your family since forever.”

“What does that mean?” McGarrett roared.

John got himself between McGarrett and Rodney, arms outstretched, fending them both off.

“Geez, this isn’t helping. Focus, McKay.” He pushed him back. “Get on what remains of these computers, see what you can retrieve.”

“Like Hell, I will. I’m going to look for Grant.” Rodney pulled back, already hauling his primary laptop out of his backpack.

“I’ll look at the computers.” Chin slumped sadly, looking at the devastation.

“I’ve got everything here,” Rodney said snidely as he crossed his legs and sank down on the floor right in the middle of the wreckage. He reached into his bag and pulled out a data tablet and handed it over to a bemused Chin. “Here, make use of this. You appear to have some computer skills.”

John was definitely getting Carson to give Grant a subcutaneous transmitter at the first opportunity.

“No,” McGarrett said to Chin. “Go get Sang Min from wherever you’ve stashed him. We need to find out what he knows about Wo Fat’s operations.”

Chin smiled a tense, vindictive smile. “He’s with the family. The cousins and uncles are ‘looking’ after him. They can bring him to us.”

“Even better.” McGarrett closed his eyes for a second. “Okay, call the family and get them to bring Sang Min here. Then get on that computer. Kono, breakout.”

Kono glanced at the motley crew that suddenly stared at her. McGarrett glowered at all and sundry before turning on his heel and heading to the office opposite his own. Frankly curious, McKay watched McGarrett and Kono go into office before Williams blocked his view. And then the two of them were off again.

“McKay,” John said bluntly, “find Grant and Ms. Kaye.”

That stopped Rodney mid-spiel. Brow furrowed, the question was obvious, _‘What about Rusty-Dusty? Hang on she’ll have a subcutaneous transmitter…’_

“Daedalus,” John answered.

“What does that mean?” Williams demanded.

“It’s about Icarus and Daedalus from Greek Legend. They built wings out of feathers and wax so that they could fly. Icarus flew too close to the sun and the wax holding the feathers on his wings melted and he plummeted to his death. But his father, Daedalus, was the better inventor. It’s McKay’s nickname. And to remind him not to fly too close to the sun.” John was pretty proud of that piece of baloney. Luckily, Williams’ attention was on him and not on McKay wildly rolling his eyes.

John leaned back a hair. McGarrett was speaking softly and intensely to the younger woman. She was nodding, throat bobbing as she swallowed convulsively.

Williams twisted and glanced over his shoulder. He sighed. “I’m fairly sure that Wo Fat engineered a witness against her. Got her put on suspension. She’s pretty cut up about it.”

McGarrett rested a hand on her shoulder and Kono nodded, lips pursed. Then suddenly, she smiled, bright as the morning sun. She nodded sharply.

“Okay,” McGarrett said loud enough for the others to hear. “Kono, I want you to access the Hawai’i State Supreme Court CCTV. Spot our perps and see if you can figure out how they got in and did this and, more importantly, got out with Jenna and the other guy.”

“Yes, Boss.” She snapped off a salute. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Grant. His name is Grant,” Rodney informed Kono as she headed to the exit.

She stopped on a dime, but was vibrating to continue with her mission. “Okay. Do you have a picture of this Grant?”

“That’s not necessary.” Rodney tilted his chin. “For the sake of simplicity -– We’re twins. Grant looks like me.”

“Okay,” Kono said slowly. She produced a BlackberryTM from somewhere in her skimpy top and snapped off a picture. “I’ll get right on that.”

“What?” Rodney was open mouthed in the face of her exit. John thought that it was kind of funny.

McGarrett tapped John’s shoulder and then jerked his thumb at the office adjacent to his own bloodied office.

“We need to talk,” he said with studied niceness.

John got into the office ahead of McGarrett and perched on the edge of the desk that dominated the room. McGarett began to talk, stopped half way through the first sentence, paused, made an abrupt about turn and paced the length of the room. He stopped again, turned and glared at John, mutely.

“Have you heard of the SGC?” John opened with.

McGarrett pursed his lips, top one jutting out. Finally, he said, “Rumoured highly-highly classified operation out of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado? Takes specialists and Class A from all services?”

“Yes.” John nodded. He knew that McGarrett wasn’t read into the mission, but rumours were the bread and butter during late nights on operations, especially that long hour before dawn on watch. “You know anything else?”

McGarrett struggled to get the word out, before finally saying, voice rife with disbelief, “Aliens.”

John couldn’t help but shrug. “It’s true. We prevent incursion from a variety of alien races. What you saw before was Sergeant Mehra being beamed up using tech that we acquired from a race called the Goa’uld, or was it the Asgard? I can never remember.”

McGarrett had seen the evidence with his own two eyes.

“How does this link to my case?” McGarrett asked intently.

“I’m not too sure,” John said slowly. He was impressed with McGarrett’s focus; the Lieutenant Commander had weighed the evidence, came to a decision, and was now moving on to ramifications in the space of a minute. This guy would be great in the SGC.

“Really?” McGarrett’s nostrils pinched. They didn’t have the same nose, John observed, apropos of nothing.

“Grant would probably have a hundred theories, but honestly there’s so much here that makes no sense. Why the focus on your family? Why didn’t Wo Fat kill you? Wo Fat wants something from you. It…” John froze in horrified realisation. He snatched his cell phone from his breast pocket. Glancing at his wrist watch, he calculated the difference between the Islands of Hawai’i and the East Coast headquarters of Sheppard International. It was early morning. He extended one finger demanding patience from McGarrett.

McGarrett crossed his arms and glared.

The phone rang once.

“Mr. Sheppard’s office,” a bright, young voice said.

“This is his brother, John. Put me through, Sabrina. Thanks.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel Sheppard.”

“Hi, John. I didn’t know you were Stateside,” Dave said with just a tinge of distrust.

“Hit that fancy button on your phone.”

Dave huffed out a laugh. “I hit it as soon as Sabrina said it was you.”

“This is about Sheppard Industries. You have any business with a Wo Fat or a Hero uhm?” John trailed off -- what was the name of that guy that was involved in McGarrett’s mom’s death? His mom? Their mom? Rodney’s report had been sketchy and delivered at the speed of light.

“Hiro Noshimuri,” McGarrett supplied. He gave up standing over John, glaring, and perched on the desk beside him, head canted to the side so he could listen.

“Hiro Noshimuri,” John echoed.

“Hang on.” There was the sound of laptop keys tapping.

“I’m familiar with the name Noshimuri. He’s a heavy hitter, though,” Dave said offhand as he continued to hunt and peck at his laptop keys. “He expressed an interest in combined work in Asia and in the Pan Pacific. But he made an unsuccessful move on a floating stock option just after dad’s death which was more than a little underhanded. I haven’t heard anything about him for a while.”

“And Wo Fat?”

“Never heard of him. Why?”

McGarrett held up his BlackberryTM showing a photo of Wo Fat.

“Holy Shit.” John leaned closer to scrutinise the picture. The man was a dead ringer for the Sataeden ex-wraith worshiper, Tyre. A little bit older, though, and -- John found it hard to put his finger on the correct term but settled for ‘polished.’

“You know him?” McGarrett asked.

“He kind of looks a little like a… terrorist I knew. Tyre’s dead. Blew himself up.”

“Any chance?” McGarrett asked, an edge of suspicion colouring his words.

“Nah, long dead. Not a chance in Hell.”

“Who are you talking to?” Dave asked waspishly.

“Hang on, Dave, I’m just going to FTP a photo to your secure server – have a look. See if you know this guy.”

McGarrett handed over his phone. Tucking his own phone between his cheek and ear, John tapped out the http link and attached the file. It pinged and a millisecond later pinged on the other side of the country; announcement email dropping into Dave’s inbox. John tossed McGarrett’s phone back over.

Click, click, click. “Downloaded it,” Dave said. “Oh, yeah, that’s Uncle Sun's son. Zhang Kaige. I only met him a couple of times. But you remember Sun Kaige, don’t you?”

“No.” John’s heart sank. “Are they shareholders?”

“What is this about, John?” Dave countered.

“It’s important,” John said in the face of his brother’s typical wrangling.

“Yes,” Dave said succinctly. “Less than 0.5%. We have the option to buy back if they want to sell. It relates back to dad’s first company, Irving-Sheppard, when he was first starting out from under Grandfather’s umbrella. Sun Kaige part-financed Dad. Dad sold the company outright at a profit when he had proved himself to Grandfather and started working full time for Sheppard Industries.”

“And Sun Kaige bought that company.”

“Yes.”

John pulled back and looked at the phone. “You’ve got a good memory.”

He could imagine his brother rolling his eyes.

“It was dad’s ‘coming of age story.’ How he proved himself to Grandfather. I can quote it verbatim.”

“Anything else?” John asked tersely.

Dave snorted. “You’re visiting before you head back out, aren’t you?” he bargained.

That was to be expected. Dave was fully aware that these weren’t just simple questions. And even if the line was secure, he wanted to get to the bottom of John’s line of questions and their relevance to Sheppard Industries, face-to-face.

“Yes, I promise.”

There was a millisecond of stunned silence in the wake that promise.

“Look, John, that’s all I know about him. He wasn’t involved in the business. Sun Kaige and Dad were good friends, you know that, John. He was a nice guy. He visited.”

“Were?”

“Yeah, he died of a stroke about two years ago. About two or three months before dad died. John, what’s this about?”

“I’ll tell you when we see each other. I gotta go.”

“What? John--”

John pressed down hard on the disconnect key.

“So you know Wo Fat’s dad, this Sun Kaige,” McGarrett said suspiciously.

John just had to stop a second and listen to his heartbeat throb in his ears. “Yeah, but under different names,” he finally said. He laughed but there was no humour in it. “Sun Kaige is an old family friend. So old that… that he actually introduced my dad to my mom.”

“Whoa.” McGarrett’s pushed off the table, putting space between John and him. “This is getting really strange,” he said.

“It’s about to get significantly weirder.” He slipped his Ancient data ball out of his pocket and gently lobbed it to McGarrett.

McGarrett caught it instinctively and it lit up. Ancient blue lights strobed across the surface. He scrunched his nose at it, perplexed, and a hologram began to form in the air before them.

John reached out and plucked the crystal out of McGarrett’s hands before the hologram could resolve into a recognisable shape and commanded the data ball to switch off.

“This--” John spun it in his fingers, “--responds to a specific gene type which we share. It’s maternal DNA. We know we probably share the same mother. I thought my mother was dead forty years ago. Wo Fat murdered your Mom in 1992. Then it gets really complicated, we have a younger brother, he was born in 1981.”

“This is insane. I don’t have a younger brother. I have a sister.”

“When was she born?”

“1981. May.”

“The gene set that makes this happen--” John lit up the ball and made a hologram of a detailed surf board resolve in mid-air, “--is very, very rare and it’s very, very old. And up until about a day ago, I thought that only people in the SGC cared about it. But I’m thinking that maybe other people, people like your Wo Fat, know about it. And that’s why, even though you’ve been a complete and utter pain in his ass, he hasn’t killed you. And now it turns out that Wo Fat’s dad introduced my mom to my dad.”

“The Governor said that I wouldn’t like what I would find about my family if I probed.” McGarrett stood stock still as he processed, his mouth open a fraction. He held out his hand and John dropped the crystal ball back onto his palm. John knew the visceral stroke of activating Ancient tech; it had a curiously sensual feel to it. “It’s talking to me.”

“Not in words, though?”

“Nah.” McGarrett chewed on his bottom lip. “I mean. So what. We can make a glass ball light up. Why is that important? How does it all relate?”

“There’s other stuff out there which isn’t so innocent. And, that younger brother I was talking about? He’s a telepath. He can pluck words and thoughts out of your head.” John continued, “You heard the Antarctic rumours? The base down there near McMurdo? There was a big fire fight. Russians were involved. US Air Force. Japan even?”

“That story’s true?” McGarrett said disbelievingly.

John nodded. “Those Goa’uld I mentioned? They tried to invade Earth. A guy with our gene set, we’re probably related somehow, stopped them invading. He sat in an alien-built outpost manning a giant gun and blew the aliens out of the air. One space ship that he took out was near the moon.”

“Jesus.” McGarrett slumped forwards.

 _Can you hear me?_ John tried, thoughts of aliens and Ancients and genes in his mind. _McGarrett?_

Inexplicably, he was relieved when McGarrett didn’t react. He didn’t think that he could face being telepathic.

McGarrett suddenly snorted. “I can’t believe it, you really are a Space Cadet.”

“Better than being a squid, Squid,” John riposted. “I’ve been in space battles. And in my day job I fire lasers.”

McGarrett’s reaction could only be described as green, outright jealousy.

Movement caught John’s attention. Simultaneously, he and McGarrett turned towards the glass door. Williams froze, hand poised on the handle. They held his gaze for a millisecond and then the detective was in the office as fast as if he had teleported.

“So what is it? What’s going on? There’s blood all over the floor of your office, Steve. Jenna or that Grant guy or the lady Marine’s been hurt.”

“Or one of the bad guys,” John said equably, secure in the knowledge that Sergeant Mehra was in the SGC infirmary getting top notch care under Carson’s eagle-eyed scrutiny.

“Yeah, well, we have to operate on the assumption that it’s one of ours. And given the amount of blood whoever got hurt is in trouble. So less of the private little chit chats and more sharing. I want to know who exactly you are and how you link with McGarrett, Mr. Colonel John Sheppard, sir. Because according to Chin’s hacking, you’re this two bit asswipe who was heading for a dishonourable discharge before you suddenly went off the map and then re-emerged as a colonel. And that smacks of those underhanded affairs that Super SEAL here calls black ops. So tell me exactly who you are and why all this effort for McGarrett.”

John blinked. This guy could give Rodney a run for his money.

“It’s classified,” John drawled and leaned back, bracing his arms behind him, pose deliberately relaxed.

Williams bristled.

Some people were just too easy to wind up, John noted. It was far too much fun.

“Classified. Classified. I’ll give you classified!”

“Danny.” McGarrett intercepted the smaller man before he could bounce across the office.

“I don’t believe for one minute that you’re related to this guy, Steve.” His chest puffed out, putting a Bantam rooster to shame.

John sat up straighter. He was having problems with that himself. Twenty-four hours ago he had had one slightly estranged half-brother. Now he had three. A snapping whisper over his comm caught his attention and spoke of Rodney’s growing frustration. He tweaked the base unit in his trouser pocket, increasing the gain. Rodney was in communication with the Daedalus as they tried to locate Grant’s Human-Ancient cobbled together kit using the sensors.

Detective Williams was bouncing up and down on his toes, pushing himself fractionally taller. His fingers dib-dabbed away as he added emphasis to every word by poking McGarrett in the centre of his chest. McGarrett met his abuse phlegmatically.

“There’s no way on God’s Green Earth,” Williams said, “that you--”

“Power source,” John blurted in the face of that fire cracker energy. “What’s Grant using to power his tricorder?”

“Eureka!” Rodney bellowed, deafening John in one ear and informing everyone in the office and the entire Alo’iōlani Hale building that he had made a breakthrough (courtesy of John and indirectly Danny Williams).

“I gotta go, Sheppard. I gotta go to the Daedalus and calibrate the sensors,” he yelled. “Grant used a prototype naquada cell.”

“Don’t!” John shot by McGarrett and Williams, just making it in time to stop Rodney calling for a beam up. “Civilians.”

“Oh.” Rodney had the grace to look abashed as he shot an insincerely toothy smile at Chin Ho Kelly sitting on the floor beside him. “Got to go. Out. The. Door. Yes. The door over there.”

McKay was criminally bad at bluffing. It was almost embarrassing to watch. He scrabbled around, corralling in laptop, external hard drive and what looked like a bulkier version of Grant’s tricorder, and thrusting them willy-nilly into his backpack.

“Hey. Hey, I want some answers. What are you doing?” Williams demanded.

“No time. No time,” Rodney carolled, sounding a lot like Grant. Belongings half packed, he clutched them to his chest and bolted. “Won’t be long.”

“So,” John said in the wake of his departure, while everyone else got used to the fact that there was suddenly more air in the room to breathe. “Has the CCTV showed what went down here?”

Slowly, Chin Ho Kelly uncrossed his legs and stood up. He held Rodney’s spare datapad. He actually held it a little covetously. John made a mental note to get it back as soon as possible.

“Everything has been wiped. Very professionally, I might add,” Chin said dispassionately. “There’s not a single bit of footage available from the moment that we left the headquarters for the justice building to when I switched it back on. Two things happened: video memory was purged, about two hours between 13:00 to 15:00. And then the cameras ran on a short loop so no new images were recorded. Security watched the loop.”

“How did they do that?” Williams asked.

“I can think of a few ways. But the easiest is within the building,” Chin mused. “Everything’s gone. Including imagery of people coming in and out of the building, parking lot, everything. Kono went to talk to the security guards to see if they saw anything. This was very professional.”

McGarrett stepped forwards and all eyes turned to him. “How long will it take your guy to track this power cell?” he asked John.

“McKay normally verbally estimates half an hour. It will be about twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” McGarrett had his tie halfway off before John had finished speaking. “Everyone kit up, we’ll be out of here in thirty.”

Making an abrupt turn on his heel, which John could have never managed on his best day of drill training in his life, McGarrett marched into his office shedding his dress uniform as he went. His jacket he carefully hung on a hanger and hooked it to hang off the bookshelf beside the big table. His suspenders, shirt and tie ended up in a heap on the couch.

Absently, John stepped over Dusty’s blood.

Rooting around in his desk drawers, McGarrett found a clean, white t-shirt. Shaking it out, he pulled it on in one smooth movement.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got another change of clothes in there?” John asked, looking down at the blue of his own dress uniform.

“T-shirt.” McGarrett tossed over a new one, cellophane wrapping crinkling. “Another pair of pants, no.”

McGarrett kicked off his shiny Oxford shoes and skinned out of his pressed pants.

“Shameless!” Williams hollered from outside the office. “You’re opposite your window.”

“Grow up,” McGarrett called back as he yanked up a pair of cargo pants, buttoning them low on his hips.

“Rodney.” John tapped his comm.

“Busy,”

“When you come back bring my BDUs.”

“I’ll be bringing more than your BDUs. I’ll be bringing an assault team. Now leave me alone. I’m busy!”

John plucked the tiny receiver out of his ear, and stuck a finger in its place and wiggled it. Rodney’s sign off had actually been painful.

“So you guys will be bringing an assault team?” McGarrett echoed.

John raised an eyebrow in question.

“I’ve got good hearing,” McGarrett responded, “and that dude’s voice carries.”

John couldn’t dispute that. He stuck the receiver back in his ear; he couldn’t stay out of touch.

“Good idea,” McGarrett continued. “I really don’t know who to trust in the HPD.”

“Boss!” Kono called.

McGarrett dodged around the table and out of the office. John strolled after him.

“The cousins are here and Sang Min.” Five tall, solid locals flanked a skinny Asian man in a prisoner-orange jumpsuit, chained at the wrist and ankles.

“Okay.” A nod of McGarrett’s head had Chin directing them to forcibly sit the prisoner on a chair in the centre of the room.

Sang Min licked his lips, taking in the devastation around him.

“Had visitors, I see.” He smirked.

“There’s two ways that this can go, Sang Min,” McGarrett said. “You tell me what I want to know and live. You don’t tell me what I want to know and I put you in the General Population in the Honolulu Correctional Facility and stand back and watch the entertainment. Where is Wo Fat?”

“I don’t know,” Sang Min whined a millisecond later.

“Not good enough.” McGarrett crossed his arms.

“I don’t know what you want to know. I’ve told you everything.”

“Wo Fat’s got something going down. Something big,” Williams interrupted. “And it’s going down today. Tomorrow at the latest. What is it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Sang Min reiterated, shifting against his chains. “I don’t know.”

“You know Wo Fat. You know his operations,” McGarrett said. “Where would he base something big?”

Sang Min froze, sly understanding scrolled across his thin face. “Not something big. Someone big. The Dragon.”

“Who’s the Dragon?” John asked.

Sang Min shrugged as best he could with a cousin’s meaty hand on his shoulder.

“High up in the Yakuza. But quiet. When the Dragon walks people look away.”

“What does that mean?” Williams demanded.

“I do not know. To speak of the Dragon can mean your death. You promised to protect my family, McGarrett. You gave your Word.”

“They’re safe.” McGarrett paused for the space of a heart beat, evidently thinking. “This Dragon where is he likely to be?”

“I don’t know. On my family’s safety, I do not know.”

McGarrett jerked his head at the door. “Get him out of here and put him somewhere safe.”

“Right, got it,” Rodney said over John’s comm.

“That was quick.” John turned his back on the interrogation.

“Genius,” Rodney preened.

“What are the coordinates?”

“I’m beaming down to the headquarters. I’ll bring the scans that are downloading to my spare datapad as we speak. Is my favourite one there?”

John eyed Chin Ho Kelly. “Yeah, I’ll get it for you.”

“There’s a team setting up. Ronon’s going with. He’s looking forward to -– and I quote -– kicking some ass. Okay, I’m at the platform, be with you in two ticks. Oh, Toby’s coming.”

“What?” There was the unmistakable sound of the transporter engaging, sort of like falling light in a waterfall.

McGarrett was staring at him. “We have a location?”

“Yeah.”

“Excuse me. Excuse me. You’re big. Is he a prisoner? Is that why he’s wearing orange? I thought that was only on television.” McKay darted into the office around the wall of cousins exiting. “Ah ah!”

Chin jerked back as Rodney flew across the room.

“That’s where that went. I need that.”

“Where have you been hiding? The stairwell?” Williams asked suspiciously.

Rodney stared at him wide eyed and then snapped, “Classified.”

Williams’ face scrunched. “I--”

“Hey.” Toby tossed John a bulky backpack. “Your equipment.”

Toby was kitted out in SGC-standard black BDUs, one hand protectively over the medical satchel that probably Carson had gifted him.

“Is there somewhere I can change?” John asked.

“You can use my office,” McGarrett said absently.

“Don’t you have a changing room?”

“Don’t be such a girl,” Rodney said as he juggled datapads and datasets. “Okay, this is what I’ve figured out –- don’t ask me how because I can’t tell you.”

John chose to change there in the main room; time was of the essence. Grant had been missing anything up to four hours. And that was three hours and fifty nine minutes too long in John’s estimation. Everyone was focused on Rodney’s presentation, so he could skin out of his dress blues quickly and unnoticeably. Kono grinned at him and waggled her eyebrows. John pulled off his jacket and balled it up. The creases were going to be a bitch to get out. He chucked it and his tie in the backpack.

Rodney handed his second favourite data tablet to Chin. “Angle it so everyone can see,” he ordered.

Chin complied.

“I’ve copied the information over. This is the location, it’s on a headland. There’re a lot of them in Hawai’i, aren’t there? Must be because it’s volcanic? The house on the tip, that’s where Grant’s signal is coming from. Satellite telemetry and state of the art scans show eighteen people in the house and grounds. Eight are in the garden patrolling, I guess.” Rodney stroked a stubby finger across the screen, zooming in on the west portion of the house. The real time infrared filter imagery abruptly resolved with 3-D schematics.

“Cool,” Kono breathed, her attention on the briefing.

Faster than the speed of light, John pulled his shirt off and his black thinsulate fleece on. No one noticed. Thank god he had chosen to wear shorts, he thought, as he shuffled out of his pressed pants.

“What you’re seeing is an approximate correlation with received signals and known architecture. This room in the centre of the basement--” it highlighted in red, before their eyes, “--is very definitely shielded.”

“How?” John asked, because depending on the answer this shit had got significantly more serious.

Rodney grimaced. “I only have one series of scans so far to work with. Information is being uploaded in real time, but I’ve had to utilise decryption algorithms to filter the signal.”

“Rodney.”

“The basement room is physically protected – lead casing or another dense metal. We are encountering electronic interference, but NID, Trust, any criminal organisation with a half a brain can use white noise generators, other jammers to interfere with signals. Multiple jammers.”

“Who are you guys, really?” Williams demanded.

“Shush,” McGarrett interrupted. “Continue.”

“Don’t you shush me.”

“Seriously, Danny, we need to hear this and we won’t be going anywhere until we have all the information we need. Go on.”

Rodney pursed his lips together. “You know, they really don’t need to be here,” he pointed out to John.

Before Williams could explode into tiny irate pieces of detective, McGarrett spoke, “There’s no way on Earth you’re cutting us out of this.” He held up John’s Ancient glowing crystal ball. “We have missing people. This is about my mom. My dad. And Wo Fat. You’ll leave us behind over my dead body.”

“Commander,” John said in the face of that statement. “Stand down and let Dr. McKay finish his briefing.”

McGarrett’s expression flattened into neutral weighing assessment. John waited for the thoughts that he knew were churning behind that façade to reach their inevitable capitulation.

“Okay, Colonel.”

“I--” Williams immediately started up again. The man was relentless.

“Danno,” McGarrett quelled him with a word.

Turning pink with indignation, Williams sat down with a thump.

“The shielded room is probably a walk-in safe given, you know, the lack of plumbing and air conditioning in this humid, hot hell you call Hawai’i,” Rodney continued.

“Don’t,” McGarrett said inexplicably to Williams.

“There are two people sitting in the room on the ground floor. There’s a lot of electronic equipment in the office, so I’m assuming it’s the security hub. Two hot bodies are walking through the house. Patrolling?”

John concurred, watching their path taking in all the doors and exits.

“Second floor, Grant’s tricorder is here.” Rodney tapped the room in the centre of the building, conveniently and suspiciously, directly over the shielded room in the basement. “It’s moving so someone is carrying it. Three people are moving between the tricorder room and the balcony and a third room -– reception or bedroom? -- two of them move around the entire mansion. Serving staff?”

“Grant?” John asked.

“There’s one person in the bedroom – sitting in the corner with his back to the wall.” Rodney stroked the screen and numbers began to stream down the left hand side window. “Data’s still compiling. But body mass index puts him in Grant’s percentile.”

“Where’s Jenna?” McGarrett and Kono asked simultaneously.

McKay tapped the central room where three bodies radiated heat. “This is her, based on height and probable weight. She’s not carrying the tricorder.”

“Straightforward extraction, get in and get out with Grant, Ms. Kaye and Wo Fat, plus any intel that we find on site,” John summarised. “Come on, McGarrett. You’re with us.”

Williams froze; his sudden silence spoke loudly of his utter focus. “No,” he said. “No way.”

“I’m sorry, Detective,” John said, “you’re not read into this mission and it’s so classified that you cannot be read into the mission. And you don’t have the skill set we need. McGarrett, are you coming or not? I will bring Jenna Kaye back and Wo Fat will be incarcerated.”

“No frigging way!” Williams screamed, bouncing forward, chest out.

“Danny!” McGarrett caught him around the waist and bodily lifted and blocked, preventing Williams from invading John’s admittedly considerably wide personal space bubble and probably following through with a round house punch.

“He can’t do this, Steve.” Williams hollered, drowning out Chin and Kono’s protestations.

McGarrett corralled his partner, curling around him. “He can. I’ll be safe. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that. You don’t even know this guy.” Williams pushed half-heartedly against McGarrett’s encircling arm.

McGarrett craned his head and stared directly at John, weighing. John met his stare unflinchingly, counting down in his head. McGarrett had the information he needed to make an informed decision. When push came to shove the SEAL’s presence wasn’t actually necessary; John was offering to allow him to come along on the ride.

“I have to go, Danno. We need boots on the ground at the site and I’m the only one that can go.”

“Will they cover your back?”

“You have my word, Detective.” John finished clipping his tac vest. Ronon must have packed his kit bag because there was a P-90 stashed in the bottom. He hooked it on its carabineer and rested his hands on its butt. “McGarrett.”

“Yes, sir.” McGarrett straightened leaving Williams looking smaller than usual.

His partner sagged, bereft, as McGarrett stalked out of the H5-0 task force office without looking back. John nodded once at Williams and followed McGarrett out the door.

“Right. Pack up. Unpack. Pack up,” Rodney said as he once again gathered his computers.

“Don’t forget your spare data tablet,” John directed.

“Oh, oh.” Rodney clicked his fingers.

Reluctantly, Chin Ho Kelly passed over the computer.

 _Toby? You coming?_

Toby blinked. _::Yes, man, that was intense. Back to the roof to be picked up by the Daedalus::_

 _You’re taking this really well._

 _::Weird is my life. Met a faith healer once, she could heal you with her thoughts. Still couldn’t prove it was real, though::_

McKay came running up behind. He had his data tablet in his hands. “About time. We’ve spent far too much time updating people. We have live feed; data’s still compiling. Stairs. Stairs.”

There was an office worker at the end of the corridor, who took one look at them and bolted off in the opposite direction.

McGarrett abruptly turned left and kicked open the door into the stairwell. He fetched up, back against the wall on the landing.

“We need to be gathered in an area of less than two meters diameter,” Rodney said for McGarrett’s benefit, and crooked his finger. “Off the wall.”

Rolling his eyes, McGarrett took a step away.

“I love saying this: four to beam up.” Rodney grinned.

 

~*~

“We should wait until it’s dark,” Ronon rumbled, the only voice of discontent in the twenty man team waiting in the Daedalus’ F-302 hanger.

“No,” John said. He gave Ronon too much leeway. “They’ve had Grant for four hours. We have the element of surprise. And it’s not subject to discussion. Zats. Take down everyone. And then interrogation. Who knows what they got from Grant. And they separated his Ancient tech from him. That needs to be retrieved. Collect all hard drives.

“Your pads are updated in real time,” John continued addressing the combined SGC and SGA teams. “Team four, Major De Salvo, will beam down in the grounds and take out the guards. Team three, Major Yeung, basement and assess the shielded room. Team two, Major Harjo, first level, secure the guards, take out the jammers. Team one, my team, secure Grant and take out Wo Fat and this Dragon.”

“Dragon? Serpent? Snake? Goa’uld?” Rodney proposed.

“Knowing the shit we face, probably yes,” John said soberly. “But there’s no proof. Not even an inkling of Goa’uld involvement. Open minds, people. Secure and control. I want no fatalities. Treat this like any off world mission. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” they bellowed en masse.

“Beaming down in ten.” John snapped off his characteristically cavalier salute. His men understood him.

Lorne nodded at him, secure in covering John’s ass, although John was going to assign him to go with McKay to retrieve Grant. Cody was assigned to babysit McGarrett and that had gone down well. Ronon was pumped, ready to fight, part of him focused on getting Grant, but the larger portion just wanting to kick ass. Ronon wasn’t that fond of Earth. He thought it was boring. Teyla was benched, seven and a half months pregnant with Torren’s baby brother or sister (she wasn’t telling).

“Why don’t you just beam them up into the hold and shoot the shit out of them?” McGarrett asked.

“Signal degradation. There are in situ jammers. My algorithms are effective, but you don’t want to risk molecular reintegration errors,” Rodney answered. “Works best with a subcutaneous transmitter.” Rabbit-fast he leaned over and tapped McGarrett’s newly injected bicep, courtesy of Carson.

McGarrett manifestly restrained himself from smacking McKay’s hand out of the way. “I’d be willing to chance it.”

“You might sing a different tune in two or three years when you’ve got Parkinson’s or something equally nasty,” Rodney said pithily. “I’m fairly sure that the signatories of the Geneva Convention would protest too.”

“So that’s why we have to beam down into the grounds to make a ground assault?” McGarrett double-checked, sensibly, John thought. “How far?”

Rodney nodded and began to explain how far away from the building.

 _I’m not comfortable with you coming,_ John said to Toby. Immediately, he revised that, _You’re not coming, Toby._

 _::No way. This is about my life. And I’ve been trying to figure this out a lot longer than you::_

 _We’re running a strategic op on an armed foe. You’re not trained--_

 _::I’m a paramedic; I’ve gone in with SWAT before. I know how to follow orders, I know to stay back and I’m freakin’ invaluable. I’m a telepath::_

McGarrett was staring at them, eyebrows drawing together, forming deep furrows in the centre of his forehead.

 _I don’t want this Dragon to have sight of you._

Toby jerked back _::You don’t even know if this has anything to do with your Ancient gene stuff. It’s all guess work. It could be something entirely unrelated. And the Dragon could just be a pretentious name. Nothing to do with any of the creepy stuff you’re thinking::_

 _And you’re not trained,_ John said mulishly. _And stop reading my mind._

 _::I am too trained. I’m a paramedic!::_ Toby pointed at the four teams. _::Where’s your corpsman? I don’t see your corpsman – you need a medic on site::_

 _You stay with McKay and Lorne. Okay? Grant’s probably going to need your help._ That was a bit manipulative, giving him a patient, but John was comfortable with manipulation when it protected the people he knew.

“What are you guys doing?” McGarrett waved his finger, mid-air, in a circle.

 _::Can you hear us?::_ Toby tried, piercingly.

McGarrett squinted. “What is that?” He jabbed the finger in his ear. “It’s like a high frequency whine but infinitely more annoying.”

“So you’re not getting any words?” John asked.

“Seriously, you weren’t kidding about the telepathy?” he asked, dubiously.

“It’s weird to say it out loud, but yes, I am a telepath. Picture and images, word melanges, but, yeah, telepath.” Toby shrugged. “You’re obviously picking up something.”

“This is fascinating,” Rodney interrupted. “And, honestly, the experiments that I’ve got lined up will blow your mind. But this isn’t the time. You, McGarrett, ignore the whining. I do--”

“Hey,” John protested, because if anyone whined it wasn’t him.

“--we’re about to go and rescue Grant and your small, CIA woman.”

“Jenna,” McGarrett said.

“McGarrett, you’re partnered with Lieutenant Hall. Toby, you’re with McKay and Major Lorne. Ronon, with me. We need to talk.” John was determined to get the last word in.

John jerked his thumb at the nook where the platform engineers hunkered down when the F-302s took off. Ronon cocked his head, curious, but willing to wait for John to expand on the reason why he’d been pulled away.

“The guy we’re after could be Tyre’s twin brother. Totally looks like him. It’s creepy. I don’t want you to…” John trailed off, freaked wasn’t the right word for Ronon. “Be distracted.”

Ronon huffed. “Guess it proves we’re more closely related than we think.”

John blinked, a little thrown. That was pretty cool.

“John? Ronon?” Teyla called, her voice echoing in the hanger.

“In here,” Ronon rumbled, sticking his head out of the gloomy little crevice.

John popped up behind him. Teyla spotted them immediately and strode over, Marines and Airmen scattering before her like a flotilla of tugboats before a majestic galleon in full sail.

She stopped before the bolthole and she eyed them dubiously. “Well, I am not climbing down there. Come up.”

That was announced with due authority, both Ronon and John scrambled to obey.

“Hey, Teyla.” John scrubbed at the back of his neck. “How are you doing?”

“We’re doing fine.” She patted her tummy, and said pointedly, “Thank you for asking.”

Damn, Teyla was pissed. John tried to remember the last time that he had called her in the last twenty-four hours. He couldn’t remember.

“How are you doing, John?” She glanced over her shoulder at McGarrett.

“Fine,” John said rote.

Teyla raised a finely plucked eyebrow.

“It’s a little weird, okay?” he said diffidently. “I mean, you know…”

“I do not. But I can guess. It is disconcerting to suddenly gain two half brothers, and realise that your mother is a mystery. But your family is here and we will help you. And should you desire, welcome your new brothers into our fold.”

 

 **End part four**

 **Part five**

Dusk pretty much came at the same time, give or take an hour or two, at Hawai’i’s latitude. The advent of low light at early evening, compared to the higher latitude position of Atlantis on New Lantea was a little strange, since at this time of year the Suns didn’t set until after twenty three hundred hours.

John shook himself for being stupid enough be distracted during an op as he ducked and ran across the flawless lawn toward the mansion’s double doors. Flanked by Ronon and Lorne, they were the vanguard, protecting Toby and McKay, while Cody and McGarrett brought up the rear. The presence of Toby and McGarrett were a heavy weight in the back of his mind. One civilian telepath and one trained SEAL were a pretty disparate, unknown and known quantity. Responsible for upwards of two hundred military personnel; he could read a service jacket in ten seconds flat. McGarrett was dedicated and loyal but obsessive to a fault. If he had known him a little better, he would have assigned him to protect Toby.

But he didn’t know him.

Yet, an inner voice said.

Team four peeled off to deal with the guards on the grounds. Team three were positioned by the window that looked into the security room, ready to break the glass and stun the inhabitants. As team one, John’s team, went in the front door, team two, Major Harjo’s, went in the back.

Lorne set the charge on the door, pumped his fist, and contained blasts blew in the doors and windows, simultaneously.

Ronon stunned a guard right inside the foyer. The man jerked once, impressively, almost shrugging off the zat blast, before crashing on the polished floor. More stun blasts followed. John took the stairs, two steps at a time. Ronon and McGarrett kept pace. Coded updates whispered in John’s ear. Most of the security personnel had been taken out by teams four and three. The ground floor was clear. Team three was heading down to the basement and the shielded room. Major Harjo and his team were heading up the back stairs.

Ronon reacted and another guard hit the floor. Ronon jumped over her prone form. John gestured, two outstretched fingers, and Lorne, McKay and Toby arrowed off. McKay ran scrunched over his datapad, processing data as he moved.

Time to face Wo Fat and this Dragon and get all the answers, he -- they -- needed.

~*~

Rodney was ninety nine percent certain that Grant was in the room. Lorne kicked open the door and it looked empty. The operative word was looked – Grant popped out from behind the dresser.

“Rodney!” Grant darted over.

Rodney rocked against the impact as Grant burrowed in. “Hey. Hey, you’re all right. We’re here.” He tried to push him off, to get a better look. There were a couple of specks of blood on his top lip and his nose was a little swollen. Someone, somewhere had given Grant a bloody nose. That someone was going to pay.

Grant sniffed loudly and swallowed.

“We need to get out of here,” Lorne said.

“Hang on.” Toby held a pressure syringe.

Grant eeled around Rodney, putting him between Toby and the syringe. “No. No. No.”

“We don’t have time for this, Grant. You need a subcutaneous transmitter. It will take a second.” Rodney ignored Grant’s betrayed expression as he manhandled him around and yanked his shirt sleeve up.

Toby was quick, but gentle, setting the pressure syringe against Grant’s meaty bicep. He winced at the hissing sound of the gas.

“Right, we’re out of here,” Lorne gestured at the door with his zat. “Do you know where Jenna Kaye is?”

Grant ducked his chin down and stared at Rodney, perplexed.

“What?” Rodney demanded.

“She’s a bad person. She’s working with Wo Fat. Haven’t you figured that out?”

~*~

 _Several hours earlier._

Grant had a picture in his head of the SEAL based on what he knew of Flyboy and the many hundreds of files, documents, and images he had flown through in the past few hours. The office did not match the picture. It was an old man’s office, with knick knacks and models. Grant picked up the decorative short paddle beside the writing pad. It was heavy. He tested the texture of the wood with his tongue: smooth. And as he mouthed it: hard.

This whole place was a study in contrasts and inconsistencies. It was sunny, but humid. He thought that he could cut the air with a knife. Jenna glanced at him, curious, taking a break from flicking aimlessly through files on her laptop.

She was inconsistent, Grant thought. Quiet and mouse-like one moment and then straightforward, pointing out her superiority the second that everyone had left the office. It was her eyebrows that really bothered him – they were finely and carefully shaped. Far too much time and professional effort had been put into their appearance. But Jenna cultivated a mien of geeky intellectual. As a true freak, Grant was very familiar with the oeuvre.

Duplicitous.

The files that she had given the H5-0 task force told an interesting story, and like most really interesting stories, they held more than a modicum of truth. But the files were mixed and muddled and meddled with so that they told only part of the real story.

She had a hack on her CIA file so that she could monitor who accessed her file. That was interesting all in its very self. But Grant hacked his own files all the time –- it was fun.

Cloning the link to her laptop, Grant watched her activity from his own computer. He could see that she was scrolling through the ongoing video observation of the palace.

Grant stood and drifted through to the giant data table following the dancing thought coalescing in his mind. The stream was there, the patterns all coming together. He dabbled his fingers over the glossy table surface. Pictures emerged from the depths of the computer. Dancing men on postcards. A car twisted into a burnt knot. A locket, old and tarnished. The real memories had been stolen away; only these ephemeral images remained.

“Oh, I’ve been very silly.”

Jenna Kaye had introduced herself to Lieutenant Commander McGarrett with a piece of the stolen evidence which the recently deceased Governor’s assistant, Laura Hills, had also been sending to McGarrett. Wo Fat and the Governor had stolen the evidence from the SEAL’s home. Jenna Kaye had never properly explained how she had gotten that single piece of evidence.

Actually, they had all been very silly.

Still it was a little circumstantial, Grant pondered. The tape could have been taken in a random raid, but Jenna Kaye had been on sabbatical for months. Why would an active CIA operative give evidence from an investigation to a mere researcher who was on a prolonged vacation?

Coupled with embedded, buried timestamp inconsistencies….

The question was: why?

“Dr. Jansky?” Dusty said softly and carefully. “Grant?”

She pushed off from the window sill, but stayed well back respecting Grant’s minimum space requirements.

“What’s up?” Dusty asked, while Grant looked for his own voice.

Warring between sidling closer to the armed woman and trying to find a closet, Grant froze.

Solution!

Grant flicked the giant screen on the table activating the keyboard and typed:

 _Jenna Kaye is a lying liar who lies._

Dusty rose on her toes so she could read the font 128 text from across the room.

She froze and darted a glance at the CIA operative sitting so innocently at the head of McGarrett’s desk.

Smoothly, the Marine flicked the retaining strap on her holster and drew her weapon. Grant held his breath. Dusty skirted along the side of the windowed office and ghosted into McGarrett’s domain.

The aborted huff of something sharp and constrained perplexed Grant, but he was astonished when Dusty clutched at her side, low on her abdomen and then slumped to the floor – without even a gasp of pain.

Jenna rose, and as she stood, the gun that she held at waist height was revealed.

Grant squeaked.

The hole at the end of the barrel was black as a singularity within the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius. Grant tried to remember everything that Flyboy had taught him. His mind was spinning around the impenetrable considerations of the mysteries of the distribution of prime numbers. But it couldn’t make him focus. This was unprecedented. All he could see was the long line of a barrel pointed directly at him and the deadly black hole in the centre.

~*~

John clocked Cody flanking McGarrett. Their objective lay before them. John nodded at Ronon and he kicked in the door into the main suite.

“That took long enough,” a supercilious voice drawled.

“Wo Fat!” McGarrett darted forward raising his zat – John stretched out his arm, futilely trying to stop him.

Blue lightning arced across the stretch of the sumptuous suite, unerringly aimed at the lounging man draped over a leather sofa. The lightning abruptly twisted and slammed into the wool pile, grounding harmlessly apart from a singed circle the size of a dollar.

Wo Fat did not bat an eyelid.

“Jenna?” McGarrett demanded. The CIA agent stood by the bay windows, arms crossed protectively over her chest. She turned her head, finding something interesting out through the balcony windows.

“That Jenna woman is working with Wo Fat!” McKay bellowed over everyone’s comm.

“Enough.” A tiny Japanese woman, elderly, with snow white hair, raised her hand.

John’s zat was wrenched out of his hand, simultaneously with all the other zats. A twist of her wrist and she flung them telekinetically against the far wall. Carefully, the woman pushed herself out of her high backed Queen Anne armchair. The straight lines of her traditional looking robes settled flawlessly around her, aided by a deft, mental hand.

“Ancient?” John muttered, borderline sub-vocal, into his comm hoping that Rodney would pick it up.

“I am very disappointed in you, Wo Fat,” she said, resting her hand at her throat over a grandiose necklace of filigree gold and opals. “That you allowed this affair to come to this degree of chaos is unconscionable.”

“New players entered the arena, no Kimi. I apologise, whole heartedly.” He slid off the chaise lounge and made obeisance, kneeling and setting his forehead on the floor.

“Still, it allowed me to meet McGarrett-chan.” She canted her head fractionally to the side and McGarrett made a jerking step forward.

“I--” McGarrett gritted his teeth and managed to stop his halting progress.

“Hmmm. And you.” She turned her considerable attention to John.

John braced himself. He didn’t know what it was deep inside his head that allowed him to feel Ancient tech, or now just think what he wanted to think at Toby and not let anything else pass, but he unfurled it now. His mind was his own.

“We thought that you were dead. Pointless. A mistake.”

“I get that a lot,” John said. “And then people die around me. I try to not let it bother me – so it doesn’t.”

“Who.” McGarrett took a deep breath. “Are. You?”

“Be quiet, child. I am talking with your elder brother.”

“No. I want to know!” Rivulets of sweat streamed down his face. The vein at his temple throbbed.

“YOU will do yourself an injury.” She twisted her hand and McGarrett was fired across the room. His head met the wall with a crack and he dropped, stunned, to the floor.

“No Kimi, I thought…” Wo Fat rose to his knees. “I thought that you didn’t want him hurt.”

“He looks on me with disrespect. And I have his brother.”

John curled his finger. “Bring it on.”

“So disrespectful. You know nothing of your heritage. You are a squalling, misbehaving child. Americans. Westerners. No sense of history. So short sighted.”

“Yadda yadda ya,” John said channelling McKay at his very best.

“This is remarkably serendipitous.” Her eyes narrowed. “We were dismayed when you disappeared into the grabbing maw of the American War Machine.”

“Do you have to talk like that?”

“Are you trying to anger me?”

“Is it working?”

She sniffed involuntarily. “Charming.”

John inclined his head. Her focus was totally on him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ronon straining against the invisible force field. But then again John doubted that it was a force field. This definitely was more of the psychic shit -– as O’Neill would say. It was looking more likely that this lady was an Ancient. Why was an Ancient living on Earth? Another prisoner like Chaya?

“Restrain the big one,” she ordered.

A flunkie bodyguard pushed off from the wall where he leaned. Ronon bared his teeth at the massive man. Placidly, the bodyguard zip tied Ronon’s hands behind his back and kicked him in the back of his knees, forcing him to the floor, and secured his feet.

“Shall I restrain the others, no Kimi?” he asked respectfully.

“The one with the hair the colour of dawn.”

“Yes, no Kimi.” He treated Cody in the same way as he had restrained Ronon.

“Ori?” McKay whispered in his ear piece. “But they’re all dead.”

“Do you have children, Colonel Sheppard?” the Dragon asked.

That came totally out of left field, but practically a millisecond later, John realised that it did not. They had speculated from the beginning that this was about the Ancient genes. John wondered how this creepy lady would handle Atlantis? On the heels of that random little imagining, he tried locking his thoughts down dead. He didn’t want her to know the tiniest little fact about Atlantis.

But her expression didn’t shift an iota. Was telepathy one of her skills? Outside, there was the sound of suppressed gunfire in the distance and the high pitched whine of zats. Reinforcements? SGC or more of the Yakuza?

 _Toby?_ he thought. _Where are you?_

 _::Outside the room::_ There was a snapshot image of Lorne poised at the door jamb, head cocked as he listened. Rodney crouched at Lorne’s feet consulting life signs detector and laptop. There was the unmistakable feel of Grant’s solid presence at Toby’s back.

“What are you doing?” The Dragon stood before him, a finely manicured fingernail a hairsbreadth from touching the knot between his eyebrows.

Yep, definitely no sparkly Goa’uld force shield scintillating as it came in close proximity to something or someone else. If he could distract her they would be able to wrest free.

“No Kimi!” Wo Fat protested.

“He will not harm me. He wants answers. An answer for an answer, Colonel John Sheppard. I compel you to be honest.”

That kind of weirdly had an air of formality and truth.

“Okay, since you’re offering. I get to go first,” John said brightly. “Do I have your word of honour you’ll tell the truth?”

A small smile curled her top lip. She nodded, barely moving her carefully coiffured head.

“Say it,” John said uncompromisingly.

“I will tell you the truth, Sheppard-chan.”

“How did I come by my abilities?” John asked.

Eyes widening in frank surprise, she stepped back. Her reaction was an answer all in itself.

“And what are your abilities?” There was a weight behind her words, and a pressure slid off him like water off a surf board. Was she trying to make him tell the truth? Whatever it was, it wasn’t working. And curiously, she didn’t seem to know.

“Hey, you didn’t answer my question. Answer a question with a question? That’s just rude.”

“As you have no doubt surmised, through your mother’s lineage.” She pursed her lips until they were hemmed by a fine white line.

“Okay,” John said quickly. “In answer to your question. Any abilities I have are really nebulous, but very occasionally – as in hardly ever throughout my entire life – I hear thoughts. My question: what’s your connection to my birth mother?”

“She was a member of my household. I trained her. I nurtured her. I ensured that she received the best education.”

“And then you pimped her out to my dad?”

The Dragon turned away. “So coarse, uncouth. Your mother fulfilled her responsibilities to my household. That was two questions. John Sheppard, where have you been these last eight years? And what have you been doing to become so knowledgeable?”

Wo Fat slid across the room, to crouch smoothly at McGarrett’s side. He rolled the unconscious man onto his back. Steve flopped, head lolling to the left, revealing the vulnerable line of his neck. Wo Fat stroked a fingertip along the length of the jugular.

 _McGarrett! McGarrett. Wake the fuck up!_ John yelled mentally.

“Answer the questions, Sheppard-chan,” the Dragon ordered.

Wo Fat set the width of his hand across Steve’s neck –- index finger and thumb over the defenceless pulse points. The flesh around his fingers dinted white.

“I thought that you didn’t want to kill him?” John swallowed.

“Apparently,” Wo Fat said, “the honourable one has decided that that is no longer an issue. And brain dead, he will still be valuable to us. He will be easier to control. Easier for us to use him. Harvest.”

John gritted his teeth and managed one heavy step. Wo Fat laughed in his face.

 _Steve!_

 _::Lieutenant Commander McGarrett::_ Toby bellowed. John folded at his knees and thudded to the floor in the wake of his intensity. _::WAKE UP!::_

The Dragon screamed, reeling backwards.

 _::Huh?::_ Steve woke, and promptly punched Wo Fat in the throat.

John launched himself at the Dragon. Startled, she raised her clenched fist and stopped him dead in mid-air. Suspended, feet hanging a fraction off the floor, John couldn’t get any leverage. Struggling to free his hands, Ronon roared.

“Tell me where you’ve been, John Sheppard,” the Dragon ordered.

“Put my brother down,” Toby yelled. He fired a zat. The Dragon flung out her hand struggling to earth the energy and contain John. Lorne backed up Toby, firing at the beefy bodyguard before he could lift his weapon.

“What!” the Dragon gaped at Toby. “William.”

“Yes! You know my name.” Toby’s eyes gleamed. Oblivious to any danger, he simply grabbed the elderly woman, spinning her to face him dead on. “Tell me who I really am!”

She went rigid. John dropped to the floor. Toby gripped the woman’s frail shoulders, holding her still. Her eyes were wide.

Steve was trading vicious kick after defensive block with Wo Fat. Blood sheeted down the side of Steve’s face, rivulets spider webbing over his cheek and jaw. Wo Fat weaved and ducked under Steve’s ham-handed, concussed punch and straight armed his chin, cracking his head back. Somehow, suddenly, John was in their space, punching Wo Fat in the side of the head before Steve could hit the floor. But the man moved with the flow of the punch, dropping and spinning to take John out at the knees.

“Shit.” Lorne fired. Wo Fat slid under the zat blast, moving with preternatural speed. He bypassed Lorne, rabbit punching him with almost casual ease, intent on reaching the Dragon.

And Toby.

John had just managed to get up when McKay entered the fray.

Rodney fired his zat, but the woman -- Jenna Kaye -- intercepted the stunning blast with her own body, reeling backwards into Wo Fat. He dominoed into Toby and the Dragon, all of them piling together on the carpet, residual zat lightning flickering over them.

John stumbled to his feet intent on kicking Wo Fat in his smug face.

“Hang on!” McKay warned.

Clumsily, Wo Fat hauled Toby up and off the Dragon. Clasping her to his chest, Wo Fat splayed his hand over the jewelled necklace adorning her chest.

The unmistakable coruscating energy of an activating Ancient transporter device engulfed the pair. It flared once and snapped out of existence, whisking them away. John’s kick cut through empty air.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” John swore. He triggered his comm. “Daedalus?” Empty static filled his ear. Evidently, Team Two had not disabled the jammer affecting long range communication.

“Hang on. Hang on,” McKay continued to echo, intent on his life signs detector.

“What?” John demanded, because he knew that tone. That was the ‘oh, shit, we’re doomed’ pitch.

“That shielded room in the basement? That was a generator. It was to power the transporter. One emergency use. And it’s overloading. We’ve got to move now!”

John freed his k-bar from the sheath at his waist. Ronon rolled over pulling his hands as far apart as possible against the biting plastic band. John cut the plastic at his wrists and ankles with two strokes before turning to Cody.

“Get Lorne out of here, Ronon,” he ordered.

The major had managed to sit upright, but he was only staying up by planting both hands on the floor.

“Cody, the woman.”

“Sir.” Cody scooped Jenna Kaye up easily.

“We have to move,” Rodney chivvied, finger jabbing urgently at the door.

“All teams evacuate,” John hollered over all channels.

“It’s going to be big,” Rodney warned. “Very big.”

John pulled a dazed Toby to his feet. “You okay?”

Toby blinked owlishly at him, open mouthed, shivering in the lingering wake of the zat blast.

“Get him out of here.” John propelled his baby brother into McKay’s arms. “Go.”

McKay went, dragging the slighter man along.

Steve still lay unconscious on the floor where Wo Fat had dumped him. Dropping to his knees, John slapped his face, hard.

“Come on, McGarrett.” He was fucking out for the count. John had to move him; he didn’t know how long they had before McKay’s predicted explosion blew. McGarrett’s sprawling long limbs were impossible to control as John tried to lift him into a sitting position before hauling him into a fireman’s carry. John had no leverage. McGarrett was a long line of disconnected joints, limp and rubbery. He was going to have to drag McGarrett out by this hair.

“Here let me help.” Grant heaved McGarrett up and over John’s shoulders and provided solidly stalwart muscle to get John to his feet.

“Get out of here, Grant.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Grant nodded but headed over to the desk by the Queen Anne chair.

“Grant!”

Fingers in his mouth, Grant scanned the desk top, pocketing a paper notepad and a small usb stick. McGarrett moaned in John’s ear. Consciousness was coming not a moment too soon.

“Steve?” he weighed a ton.

Grant was pulling open drawers and dumping the contents on the floor.

“Oh,” Grant spotted a standard black laptop bag propped up against the chaise longue. Abandoning the desk, he grabbed it.

“Put me down,” McGarrett groaned.

John gladly bent his knees, letting McGarrett roll off his shoulders. He would have got McGarrett out but he doubted his back would have ever been the same.

Steve wobbled as if on an inflatable raft in a force ten storm. John corralled him, hauling Steve’s arm over his shoulder. Steve slumped against him, chin momentarily resting on John’s shoulder.

“Where the fuck are you?” McKay demanded tinnily over the comm.

“Grant, now! That’s an order.”

“The tool chest.” McGarrett pointed blearily at the mahogany bookcase on the far wall. “Get it.”

Wide eyed, Grant glanced at John checking if that was okay.

“Just get it, Grant. We’ve got to get the Hell out of here.”

Lithely, Grant hooked the laptop strap securely across his chest, setting the bag at his back and grabbed the tool chest. That tool chest better be important, John thought.

“It is,” McGarrett said blearily.

John jerked his head at the door directing Grant to go first. But he didn’t obey, taking McGarrett’s weight on the other side.

Together they fumbled along banging bruisingly off walls, half stumbling – half slithering down the ornate staircase.

“It’s amping up,” Rodney screamed over the transmitter from somewhere, hopefully on the far side of the high brick wall that surrounded the mansion.

They trod on the unconscious body of one of Wo Fat’s goons, but they could not stop. Rodney was shrieking insults at them. McGarrett moved his long legs trying to help but it was easier to drag him along.

They emerged into a dark Hawaiian night.

“Faster, faster, faster!” McKay popped out from behind the gate pillars. He waved his arm.

Faster really wasn’t an option. Steve was a long weighty noodle, still trying his best to coordinate his legs but, frankly, he was hindering rather than helping.

“Bah!” McKay hollered and was suddenly running towards them.

A blond-headed blur bypassed Rodney, running like a whippet. Galvanised, Rodney ran faster. But Williams was there first.

“Idiot. You idiot. Told you, you shouldn’t go anywhere on your own.” He ducked down and grabbed McGarrett’s legs, scooping them up. He turned, already dragging them towards the nebulous safety of an eight foot high wall. John and Grant struggled to reposition their holds – luckily tac vests came with a multitude of straps to grab as McGarrett hung between them. Rodney caught up, yanking one of McGarrett’s legs from Williams’ grasp, hooking his knee over his arm.

“Ten,” he said flatly. “Nine.”

They ran.

“Eight.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Somehow Williams had enough air to bitch and run.

“Seven.” McKay was doing pretty well also. “Six.”

Practically everyone on his team and Chin Ho Kelly were waiting at the gate rather than hiding behind the wall. John was going to lecture them until their ears bled.

“Five.”

“You’re not helping,” Williams snarked at McKay.

“Four,” McKay bitched right back as they reached the open gates.

They were grabbed by multiple hands and bodily hauled en masse across the road, away from the walls and behind the biggest black SUV that John had ever seen.

“Three.” McKay crouched down behind the engine block and wrapped his hands around his head and looked at the ground. “Don’t look at it. Two.”

Shit, John collared Grant and wrested him to the floor and covered him with his body. The laptop on his back stuck in John’s gut. Williams was wrapped around a semi-conscious McGarrett, Chin Ho Kelly at their back.

“One.”

John exhaled harshly. Knowing, just knowing, that McKay had calculated the blast for zero and not one.

 _Zero._

The explosion was stunning. Tarmac beneath him rippled as the concussive wave pummelled down like a Hand of God. In its wake, the silence was deafening -- the world held in abeyance.

Then a hundred car alarms and house alarms blared.

John rolled off Grant.

Ronon was crouched beside them, teeth grinning whitely in his grimy face. “That was _awesome_.”

“McKay told you not to look at it.”

Ronon wiped unrepentantly at his tearing eyes. “Worth it.”

“I never want to leave Atlantis again,” Grant said. “I don’t like going off world.”

John laughed. He couldn’t help but agree. Standing up to survey the devastation, he could see that the mansion didn’t exist anymore. It was just a crater. The encircling wall that he would have crouched behind was flattened; bricks and mortar smashed against the sidewalk and carefully maintained lawns.

“Huh.” Rodney bounced up beside him. “Really quite contained when you think about it.”

“Yeah, could have been much worse,” John said.

“Well, the house atomised, which is better than debris being fired through the air at two hundred miles an hour. That wall kind of looks like a skirt dropped on the floor. Huh.” Rodney pulled out his life signs detector.

“Any radiation?” John asked.

“Yes, but not the type that will hurt us. Interesting.”

SGC teams would be scouring the site, but that would come later. Now it was SITREP time.

“Will the radiation interfere with beam outs?”

Rodney pulled a face, pondering. “No,” he said, definitely.

“Check in,” John ordered over all channels. Team Three reported in, followed by Team Two. John counted to three before Major De Salvo reported that her team were all present and correct. “Get out of here.”

He caught a flash out of the corner of his eye; the Daedalus transporter beaming up a team on the far side of the crater.

“I can’t get a cell phone signal. I can’t call for the EMTs.” Kono Kalakaua angrily slapped the side of her BlackberryTM. “Chin, can you get a signal?”

Chin Ho Kelly shook his head. He was sitting on the woman, Jenna Kaye, who he had zip-tied from neck to ankle. She wasn’t getting up or moving any time soon. Face turned away from them, she was lying still and forlorn on the sidewalk. John didn’t know if she was conscious or not.

“Steven. Commander McGarrett? Can you tell me where you are?” Toby was crouched in front of Steve, his medical kit open at his knee.

John crossed over in three strides. Williams had Steve propped up against him, half lying on his lap, bloodied and bruised head supported in the crook of his arm. Toby handed Williams a large dressing and directed him to hold the pad against the laceration that was freely bleeding and staining the whole left side of Steve’s face, neck and tac vest.

“Your hands are cold,” Steven said, distracted.

“I’m just checking your pulse,” Toby explained softly, long fingers encircling his wrist.

“Toby?” John asked.

Toby gave him the barest of glances and he released Steve’s wrist and began rifling though the medical kit. _::He’s got a serious concussion. I’m guessing a skull fracture. Pupils are equal, but sluggish. And he’s confused. We need to get him to a hospital, asap. Lorne needs an x-ray of his neck::_

Lorne was propped against the SUV. He already had a neck brace in place. Toby had been busy.

This was going to get him into so much shit. “Cody, Ronon, stay with 5-0 until we can debrief them. Detective Williams, put Steve down, we gotta transport him.”

Narrowed eyed, Williams glared at him. “There’s no rig here.”

“What are you guys doing?” Kono stopped trying to find a signal and focussed on them. John could tell that she was close to pulling her weapon.

“Look, I don’t have time to explain. Detective Williams, put your partner down.”

“No. I’m not putting my _partner_ down. Because as you rightly say, he’s my partner. And I don’t trust you one inch.” Even as he cradled Steve, his finger and thumb twitched a mere fraction of an inch apart against Steve’s shoulder. “Emergency services will be coming here; this explosion lit up the whole of Oahu. They’ll help.”

“Dann--” Steve went boneless.

“Shit!” Danny curled further into Steve. Mercurially, he snapped, “Help him.”

“Commander McGarrett. Commander McGarrett?” Toby flipped up Steve’s eyelid. John could hear him mentally cajoling him to wake up. There was no flicker of a response.

“Dadaelus, this is Colonel Sheppard. Lock in on Commander McGarrett’s subcutaneous transmitter, there’s a non-identified person next to him, grab him too.” He corralled Grant by the scruff of his neck. “Expand the beam to pick up myself, Major Lorne, Dr. Jansky and Mr. Logan. Beam us direct to the SGC infirmary. We have a medical emergency: two team members.”

“What?” Kono demanded.

McKay tapped his own chest. “What about me?” he asked even as the coruscating field began to snatch them away.

“Clear the site,” John mouthed, finishing the sentence in the SGC infirmary.

~*~

The SGC infirmary had been the best choice; they had most of the Ancient shit outside of Atlantis squirreled around the base. Medical personnel had been poised to assess them the millisecond that they had reintegrated on the dedicated landing platform adjacent to the infirmary.

Williams was opened mouthed; stunned into silence. Matter transporters were impressively useful in calming highly-strung detectives, John noted.

Toby was reporting GSC, blood pressure and pulse rate in terse sentences. Carson scanned Steve with his Ancient medical body scanner. Then Steve was snatched from Williams’ unresisting arms and loaded onto a gurney.

“What are you doing?” Williams demanded immediately.

The medical team moved with practiced, smooth coordination, securing their patient, raising the wheeled gurney to hip height and racing through swinging doors into the infirmary proper.

“We’re treating him, son,” Carson hollered, his brogue making it sound more brusque.

Another team were carefully rolling Lorne onto a stretcher, keeping his neck and spine straight and then he was whisked away after Steve.

“How did you find us?” John asked, hoping to derail what he figured was an inevitable explosion.

Williams honed in on him like a shark tracking bait in the water.

“Well, it kinda went something like this. Chin basically hacked your data tablet. But really, that was kind of redundant because you’d shown us a picture of the house on the headland and Chin and Kono have lived here their entire lives. And a rich bastard was going to own the biggest, most ostentatious bauble on the block. So, hey, we knew exactly where you were going. And I can drive a car. How’s that for our skill set?”

John winced. But, honestly, he got the impression that Williams always went straight for the jugular.

“So who are you really? And where the Hell are we?” Williams snapped.

“You’re going to have to sign a fuckload of confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements before I answer those questions.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Solitary confinement until you agree.” General O’Neill sauntered into the infirmary beaming platform room, hands in his pockets.

“That’s unconstitutional,” Williams protested.

“True, outside in the real world. But this is the front line and a military operation.” O’Neill reached behind and pulled out a sheaf of rumpled papers from his back pocket. “You might as well, son. It isn’t like anyone would believe you if you did tell them about Star Trek transporters and underground bunkers like something out of the 1940s.”

Williams snatched the papers out of O’Neill’s hand. Unbothered, the general followed through with a pen.

Bitching under his breath, Williams crouched over, resting the papers on his thigh, and began to sign by the multiple crosses on the multiple pages.

“There.” He flung them back at O’Neill, who let them bounce off his chest and fall to the floor.

“Nice one you’ve got here, Sheppard. I’d go for the solitary confinement or perhaps P3X 166.”

“Yes, sir.” Sheppard saluted. He didn’t respect a lot of people, but he respected General O’Neill.

“Come on, Grant.” O’Neill held out his arm and allowed Grant, who had been cowering in the corner, to scuttle forward and huddle under like a chick seeking protection. “Let’s get your nose seen to and then we’ll go to the commissary and get some ice cream. I checked, and they’ve got chocolate sauce and glacé cherries.”

Williams blew out a hard breath. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s been a long couple of days. And Steve--”

“Apology accepted.” O’Neill nodded at the paperwork on the floor as he conducted Grant out the door. “Make sure that gets to the lawyers.”

Begrudgingly, Williams ducked down and picked up the papers. He clutched them a second before he handed them over to John.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he reiterated.

John accepted the non-disclosure agreement and smoothed out the papers. “I understand.”

Williams raked his fingers through his hair, messing it up beyond any semblance of order. “My wife’s left me, took my kid, my partner was arrested for murder, my favourite colleague’s suspended. I thought that I’d been betrayed. You guys pop up out of nowhere and take over. You’re McGarrett’s big brother. And now I’m in an episode of Star Trek. I’m only hoping that you’ve got the probe thing that the Doctor –- Bones? -– used to use to heal people.”

“Oh, you’re old school,” John noted.

Williams glared balefully.

John held up his hands in surrender. “We do have equipment that can heal major injuries, which is why I had Commander McGarrett brought directly here.”

Williams’ hands were back in his hair. “So tell me everything.”

~*~

 

Williams was sitting, hands cupping a mug of black coffee with sugar (John didn’t have a clue if he drank coffee, but thought that he needed the sugar), processing the last couple of hours. It had been a whirlwind, censored tour of the SGC world. John had left out Atlantis, Replicators, the machinations of the Ori and the ongoing politics of the Jaffa, preferring to explain the background of the SGC: finding the Stargate and Apophis. It all boiled down to a manifesto to explore strange new worlds and bring back technology.

Williams finally took a drag of the cold coffee. He didn’t even wince. Shifting on the plastic chair outside of the infirmary, he glared at the closed doors. Evidently, he had some kind of ability because the doors opened and Carson walked out.

“Gentlemen.”

John and Williams were already standing.

“Is he okay?” Williams spoke fastest.

“Aye,” Carson said. “He had a hairline skull fracture and a nasty concussion which we’ve healed.”

“Can I see him?”

“Of course.” Carson was already conducting Williams into the ward, a gentle guiding hand on his elbow. John tagged along, because, hey, Steve McGarrett was his brother.

Half asleep, Steve was propped up on a mound of pillows and warmly covered with the obligatory infirmary red blanket. He had been cleaned up and wore the standard white smock top.

“Why’s he still got an IV thingy?” Williams whispered harshly, finger jabbing at the needle in the back of Steve’s hand. “I thought you healed him?”

“Son, it was a pretty traumatic head injury,” Carson said. “It’s bloody good kit, but it’s not miraculous. Okay, by definition it’s miraculous, but it’s not perfect. Okay, that’s not helping. I healed gross physical damage. It’s a speeding up process. We focus on the serious injuries and it’s a strain on the body. He’s tired and there’s some residual bruising and a little swelling that needs to heal itself or the body forgets how.”

“So he’s going to be okay?” Williams got down to the nitty gritty.

“Yes, son, he’s going to be fine.”

“How are Lorne and Mehra?” John asked, wanting to know and trying to defuse any potential Williams’ explosion. In the far corner of the ward there was a curtained off bed and a lump of blankets on another bed which might be Lorne.

“That person who punched him--”

“Wo Fat,” Williams supplied darkly.

“Thank you. Interesting name, but no more unusual than my first girlfriend Aoife ó Súilleabháin, when you think about it. Mr. Wo Fat cracked a vertebrae in Major Lorne’s neck. Luckily just cracked it, and we’ve used the bone knitter. He’s sleeping now.” Carson nodded at the curtained far corner. “Sergeant Mehra has been transported off site. I expect her to make a full recovery.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Carson smiled benevolently. “So you visit with your friend, Mr. Williams. I’ll likely be discharging him tomorrow afternoon or first thing the day after.”

Williams dropped down on the chair conveniently placed beside Steve’s bed. “Hey,” he said softly.

Steve smiled dopily. “Danno.”

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Danny said affectionately.

“Everyone okay?” Steve said around a massive yawn.

“Yes, you’re the only idiot that got seriously hurt. Go to sleep, you big goof, you’ll feel better.”

“Oh, okay.” Steve closed his eyes and pushed his head into the pillows relaxing into sleep, leaving Williams with the reassuring company of the array of monitors around him, steadily reporting blood pressure and heart rate, and the screen with the really disturbing brain scan by the top left hand corner of the bed.

John left Williams playing Rottweiler or, probably a better analogy, terrier protector. The guy wasn’t moving anytime soon. He had to find Toby and figure out what he had downloaded from the pseudo-Ancient bitch’s brain. He also had to grab Grant and the equipment that he had filched from the Dragon’s den. Plus there was ice cream in the commissary and chocolate sauce. Maybe if he was lucky he’d be able to get some. If he was really lucky they might have caramel sauce.

~*~

Mopping up after missions was really the worst part of missions, John thought. There had been so much crap to wade through. Checking in with the teams and ensuring that they handed in their field reports. Major Harjo had noticed that some of the bodyguards had been quite resistant to the zat blasts. Calming McKay’s ruffled feathers; he’d seriously objected to being left at the crater until he had discovered something interesting, which he wasn’t talking about just yet. In the early hours of the morning, John had checked on McGarrett, finding him comfortable, and Williams curled up on top of the blankets on the other bed. Williams had cracked one eye and registered his approach. John had mentally upgraded him from a terrier to a vicious, brindle tomcat.

John yawned into his coffee cup.

The crater down in Honolulu was cordoned off and SGC scientists were going over the site with a fine tooth comb. The SGC command staff and higher echelons were up in arms about the potential Ancient or surviving Ori in charge of the Japanese Yakuza. The link with the McGarrett family and the Sheppards and Toby Logan was still to be elucidated, but John had donated yet another vial of blood in a long line of blood letting to Carson. But back down at the 5-0 headquarters, Jenna Kaye was reluctantly shedding intel about the Yakuza and her role as a spy in the CIA and in H5-0. Her involvement in setting up McGarrett and identifying the woman who could be groomed to ‘finger’ Kono Kalakaua as part of the asset forfeiture locker fiasco were just the tip of the iceberg. The SGC and HPD lawyers were fighting a losing battle with the CIA to keep her. Four CIA operatives were en route to extract her from Chin Ho Kelly’s clutches. Luckily, the CIA had to use public transport. John figured by the time that they made it to Oahu, Jenna Kaye would have disappeared into the depths of SGC secret operations. That would make presenting her official statement as evidence a little difficult, so Kelly had already arranged a presentation before the acting governor, chief of police and three senior judges. The man was efficient as Hell; John kind of wanted him on Atlantis to sort through bureaucratic bullshit on a daily basis.

John set his mug down on the long table that dominated the SGC ops room. General O’Neill sat at the head of the table, hands clasped over his slight pudge of a belly. Half lidded, he appeared to be about to doze off. But John knew that it was all an act. The rest of the informed and those with information were arrayed around the table: Carson, who kept glancing at the computer screen at the far end of the room; Toby, looking a bit peaky; Grant, wide eyed with his laptop set protectively before him; McKay, drumming his fingers against the table top; Williams, scowling at McKay and his annoying fingers, and Steve, wearing a borrowed Navy Officer khaki uniform and black windbreaker, looking as if he was sitting to attention. Teal’c had begged off, but Colonel Sam Carter and Dr. Daniel Jackson had invited themselves to the meeting. John hoped that they weren’t going to get a lecture on the history of the Yakuza.

“Well?” McKay demanded, beating Williams to the punch. John figured that those two had been separated at birth.

O’Neill opened his eyes. “Dr. Jansky. Grant? Do you want to tell us what you’ve found out?”

“Oh, I get to go first. Good. Good. I hate waiting.” Grant perched on the edge of his chair. “I didn’t find my tricorder but I did grab a usb stick, a note pad, a laptop and a tool box. I don’t know what the tool box was for.”

“It belonged to my dad. It had evidence of his investigations into the Yakuza and Wo Fat in it,” McGarrett said softly. “Wo Fat stole it from me.”

“Oh, I’m glad I got it then.” Grant smiled brightly. “A lot of the information I found is in Japanese, understandably. So I got Dr. Jackson to help. He’s got the notepad. Most of it is just about criminal operations. Boring. I figure we just give that to the police. There’s a couple of files written in English, perhaps Ms. Kaye wrote them?”

McGarrett shook his head. “I can’t believe that she was a plant.”

“Babe,” Williams said. “You were the perfect patsy. She set up everything to make you respond and empathise with her. Dead fiancé, vulnerable and alone, pursuing a personal vendetta against the man you were after. Contrived doesn’t even begin to describe it. But we all fell for it.”

“Any rate.” Grant shifted uncomfortably. “The usb stick actually had some illegally downloaded movies on it. I haven’t seen Captain America. I didn’t even think that it was out? Anyway, really, it’s just about the criminal operations. There are some personal files on the laptop and what looks like a diary. But it has to be translated.” Grant looked hopefully at Jackson, happy to have finished speaking.

“Grant grabbed a note pad.” Jackson pushed it across the table with a finger. “What’s interesting is that it’s written partly in Man'yōgana and a few additions which I’m unfamiliar with – but working on. Man'yōgana is a kana script ancestral to the current modern form of cursive hiragana and angular katakana.”

“And?” O’Neill rolled his eyes.

“Colonel Sheppard reported that Wo Fat identified the Ancient as ‘No Kimi.’ This is an honorific suffix which dates from the Heian period in Japan from 794 to 1185. The first use of Man'yōgana dates from about the mid-seventh century.”

“So she is an Ancient?” O’Neill summarised, looking directly at Carson.

“I dunno.” He shrugged. “But if she had been Ancient she probably would have had more skills than telekinesis and she could have teleported herself. So I doubt it. I am guessing she’s a human with an active ATA gene complex. Some genetic material would have helped.”

“We were a little busy,” John pointed out.

“Well, you’re all familiar with Mendelian genetics. Yes?” Carson double checked. “Okay, I’m simplifying this massively, but the Ancient genes are recessive and sex-linked to the X chromosome. There’s a reason why all of the Ancient gene carriers identified so far, apart from Miko Kusanagi, are male. We’re more likely to see phenotypic expression in the male, because of the presence of the Y chromosome. To see phenotypic expression in a female, we need to have the Ancient genes on both parents’ X chromosomes. I can postulate that the female of the species with two active sets of genes may have considerable abilities. But given the actual nature of the sex-linked Ancient genes, independent assortment, varying dominance of different genes and mutations, getting two X’ chromosomes is going to be pretty rare.”

“Anyone understanding this?” O’Neill asked.

Carter looked at him exasperated, as Toby and McKay confirmed that, yes, they did understand.

“My sister?” Steve interrupted. “She’s affected by all this?”

“You have a sister?” Carson perked up.

“Yeah, she lives on the Mainland. I sent her there to keep her out of Wo Fat’s clutches. I’ve got a couple of ex-Navy SEAL buddies keeping an eye on her.”

“Does she have any skills?” McKay waggled his fingers nebulously beside his head.

McGarrett looked mutely at Williams, as if beseeching him to answer.

“How should I know? She’s pretty squirrelly,” Williams said. “But I haven’t seen her levitate anything.”

“We need to bring her in for gene testing,” Carson said simply.

“I was swapped with Mary,” Toby announced. “I don’t think that she’s related by blood to us. She was swapped to protect me and us all really.”

All eyes turned on Toby.

“How do you know that?” John asked.

Toby tapped his temple. “I read Den No Kimi. It was very convoluted, and there was some supposition on the Dragon’s part. Mrs. McGarrett had presented Mary to the Dragon as a newborn, but she was _human_ so the Dragon thought that she had been mistaken about our mother’s abilities. All the Dragon wanted was a girl. Girls are uncommon, boys are born more often. But it niggled her. She kept an eye on John through Sun Kaige. Steven through Wo Fat. Kept a weather eye out on our mom. She knew that my given name was William. She must have figured it out. That’s why Mrs. McGarrett died.”

“It’s a breeding programme?” Carson half-asked, half-proposed.

“Yeah. There was a whole host of memories. Some were imaginary. The pictures were fantastical.” Toby laughed but it was without humour. “Our mother’s family have been serfs – pampered pets -- since the 17th Century, since they were stolen from, I think, Ireland and sold into slavery. Their gifts were used by one feudal class after another, in secret, never being seen, using telepathy and other skills to ensure success of their masters. Dominated by the more skilled and gifted Japanese adepts… The Dragon thinks of it in blood lines. I could picture a sheaf of papyrus rolled out. There’s a historical house line in Japan that goes back to the sixth century. Another Tibetan line that is so ancient and convoluted and widespread that it gives me a headache just thinking about it. Then there’s the Celtic lines, we’re part of that. And I guess General _O’Neill_ and Dr. Beckett and Mr. _McGarrett_ and John.”

“Any interbreeding?” Carson asked clinically.

“Carson!” Rodney berated, which was hysterical given his normal degree of crassness.

“No.” Toby shook his head. “Not deliberately. I’m not too sure, but I got a sense of wanting to keep the blood lines -- I hate using this word it has so many connotations –- pure.”

“Did my mother die in that car crash?” Steve asked abruptly. “She’d already engineered her supposed death when she left Colonel Shep -- John as a baby.”

John was scribbling time lines on a scrap of paper. Analytically, he said, “I don’t see how Toby’s mom and Mrs. McGarrett-Sheppard could have been one and the same person. Toby told me that he was five or six when his mom gave birth to his baby brother. Steve would have been ten and his mom was still around.”

Toby scrubbed at his face. “I don’t know. My mom, Maya, maybe she wasn’t my biological mother? But she was a telepath. Maybe she was related to my biological mother, your mom, our mom.” Toby winced. “There could be a whole network out there. My Mom was definitely running from someone who was after her. Clooney took my brother and Mom sent me to safety.”

“Clooney?” O’Neill scribbled down a note.

“Yeah, Victor Clooney,” Toby said. “I’ve never been able to find out anything about him.”

“Is there any chance of finding--” Carson paused delicately, his compassionate gaze encompassing all three, “--any genetic material from your mom? A hairbrush or her old clothes.”

“I don’t have anything,” Toby said simply.

John shrugged. Perhaps if his dad had still been around? There might be something in the attic at The Gables.

“Yeah.” Steve nodded. “Dad was a packrat. There’s boxes of stuff in the attic. I’ve never been through them, but everything’s boxed up.”

“McKay, your turn,” O’Neill deflected.

Rodney rubbed his hands together. “It was definitely Ancient tech at the mansion. I’ve been tracking the specific radiation and--” the screen on the far wall lit up, glowing points in Oahu, two in northern Japan, three in Tibet, “there’s a network of six sites, through Asia and the Pacific Islands. Potentially, these are just the active sites and there’s a whole network over Earth. One of the Tibetan sites is in the heart of Lhasa. I’ve got satellite telemetry and it’s in the Potala Palace.”

A photograph popped up on the screen of a white, sprawling edifice perched on top of a mountain.

“Oh,” Jackson breathed. “Construction of the Potala Palace began in 1645. Another link to the 17th Century. Are the other sites of religious significance?”

“I don’t think that the mansion on Hawai’i was,” McKay said.

“Doesn’t mean that it wasn’t historically,” Steve spoke up.

“So.” O’Neill held up his hand. “A hundred thousand --”

“About 600 - 700 AD,” Daniel Jackson corrected.

“A bunch of Ancients descended, like Merlin, bringing their tech and had nookie with all our ancestors,” O’Neill said pithily. “A bunch in Celtic Ireland and Scotland. A few in Tibet and China and probably other places. And with that pernickety ancient DNA came a bunch of witchy gifts. Which people have been taking advantage of since. And we have a criminal underworld of telepaths and telekinetics. Probably a bunch of Tibetan lamas and, I dunno, pagan druids. That sounds about right. Yes?”

He actually stunned the entire table into silence with his summary.

John was trying to figure out if he had been insulted.

“Why 600-700 years ago?” McKay asked. “I think 10, 000 is more likely.”

“Oh, Merlin was an Ancient,” O’Neill said offhandedly. “Myrddin. He was involved in all that sangral stuff.”

“Sangral?” Williams asked.

“Commonly know as the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. It was actually an Ancient artefact,” Jackson answered.

“Mary is my sister,” McGarrett said obliquely, and dared anyone to disagree.

“Ohana,” Williams blurted.

“Yes!” McGarrett smiled widely at him.

“So what’s the next step?” Rodney asked.

“I figure I talk to the IOA. There’s a number of representatives on the International Oversight Committee that might have some insight, such as the members from China and Japan. That’s going to be a fun conversation.” O’Neill pushed back from the table and stood up. “ Kids, it’s time for the grown ups to deal with the politics and shit. Lieutenant Commander McGarrett?”

“Sir?” Steve rocketed to his feet.

“The charges against you have been dropped. It appears that Wo Fat orchestrated the whole affair with a mole in your department. We know that the reasons for this are linked to your genetic inheritance. However, the US judiciary system believes that the reason for Wo Fat’s machinations was to ensure that the H5-0 taskforce did not interfere with a Yakuza operation.”

“Thank you, sir.” McGarrett saluted.

O’Neill returned a sloppy salute. “Convey my congratulations to Ms. Kono Kalallaala that all the charges against her have been dropped.”

“Yes, sir,” McGarrett said, eyebrow failing not to bob, underscoring his astonishment at General O’Neill’s mispronunciation.

“Okay, you lot,” O’Neill said. “You’re all dismissed. Go have fun somewhere warm and sunny.”

“I’ll come with.” Jackson chased after O’Neill who was already out the door. “You’re going to need my help. Don’t go insulting the Chinese representative!”

Toby started to put up his hand and then dropped it underneath the table. “If they need me, they’ll come get me.”

“Party on my lanai,” Steve announced, a wide, wide smile on his face. “Barbeque and beer on the beach starting at five o’clock.”

“Before that happens, Commander.” Carson stood, grabbing his laptop and files, cocking one finger. “You’re coming to the infirmary for a check up. You didn’t have permission to come to this little meeting and you should still be on the ward.”

“I’m fine, Dr. Beckett.” Steve trailed after him, Williams immediately on his heels.

“I’ll be the judge of that, son.”

“You want to come and see if we can find more of the Ancient transporter network?” McKay almost leered at Carter.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m more interested in the method that the Dragon and Wo Fat used to power that emergency transporter.”

“I have a few ideas about that,” McKay said as he allowed Carter to exit the room ahead of him.

There was still a shit load of answers that needed to be uncovered, but sitting in the almost empty conference room, John found himself a little content. Two new brothers to go with David. Wow. Weird, creepy telepathic communications. He was going to have to get Toby to Atlantis; he wasn’t leaving him on Earth to be studied or end up in the hands of the Yakuza or the NID. And it would be fun to see him react to Atlantis. McGarrett would probably enjoy Atlantis too. A Navy SEAL would fit in like a lock and a key. He seemed pretty close to his team, though. He seemed to have a network in place, unlike Toby.

Grant smiled at him over the top of his laptop.

“Hey, Grant?”

“I got the commissary staff to save you some vanilla ice cream. You want to go now? There’s cherries.”

John glanced at his watch. That sounded fine, they had a few hours before the barbeque at McGarrett’s place.

“Is there any chocolate sauce left?”

Grant nodded, energetically. “I got them to hide the caramel too.”

What could be better?

 **End Part Five**

 **Epilogue**

This was actually pretty damn perfect, John thought, lying on a sun lounger on a private beach with a beer in hand – basking like a cat in unaccustomed, sunny contentment. Torren was a warm sleepy weight tucked against his side, all tuckered out from an afternoon playing in the sand. Teyla, on the other sun lounger, curled around the bump of her son or daughter and smiled peaceably at him.

The plan had been for an evening party, but they’d ended up Stateside just after lunch. Steve was overseeing the preparatory activity on a dual set up of coal and gas barbeques, but John could tell that Chin and Danny were really in charge. Danny kept trying to get Steve to lie on a sun lounger and rest. But he kept popping up to see what was happening or to ensure that everyone had a drink until Danny had pretty much demoted him to be their gopher with Danny’s cute little kid, Grace.

“Got it, Daddy. It was exactly where Uncle Steve said it was.” Grace came running back, slipping and sliding over the sand with what looked like a paintbrush clasped in both hands.

“Paintbrush?” Danny said. “It’s for the barbeque sauce, not the side of the house. Tell me you’ve got a food brush.”

“You said a brush. That’s a brush,” Steve pointed out.

“Unbelievable,” Danny passed his tongs over to Chin’s capable hands and strode towards the house.

“It’s clean,” Steve said to no one in particular.

Grant abandoned the sand empire – castle really didn’t describe it properly – he was constructing on the beach with Rodney. They had started helping Grace and Torren, but rapidly took over the project when their design recommendations hadn’t been followed with all due alacrity and precision. Grace had been the first to escape to search the rock pools beside Steve’s lanai for crabs and sea stars with Toby.

Grant sidled into Steve’s line of sight and stood waiting patiently, flexing his bare toes in the sand.

“Hi, Grant.” Steve raised an eyebrow in John’s direction

John shrugged.

Steve started to cross his arms but changed his mind and stuck them in his pockets.

Grant peeked at him out of the corner of his eye. Steve nodded encouragingly.

“You’re a SEAL,” Grant opened with.

“Yes.”

“You can swim.”

“Uhuh.” Steve nodded again.

“You’re a good swimmer.”

Steve stood a little taller. “Trained by the US Navy.”

“You have your own beach.”

“Yes.” Frankly befuddled, Steve’s eyebrows knotted together as he stared at Grant.

Grant stared right back. He definitely wants something, John thought.

“Oh,” Steve lit up, his smile was totally goofy. “You want to go swimming.”

“Yes,” Grant said firmly. “Can I go swimming in your water?”

“You don’t need-- Can I come with you? I can show you where the octopus lives. It’s just under that rock platform where Kono and Ronon are sunbathing. Do you have a mask and snorkel? I have spares. Fins?”

Grant looked a little stupefied in the face of Steve’s relentless enthusiasm. “Please?”

Steve bounded off towards the house, running effortlessly over the sand. John raised a finger as he passed, indicating ‘me too.’

“What the Hell?” Danny bellowed from inside the house. “You can’t go swimming. You have a concussion.”

“I got an all clear from the Scottish dude.”

“Residual swelling! You still have a bruise!”

“John’s coming with us,” Steve’s voice came distantly, evidently gone further into his sprawling house.

“Oh, and that makes it all right.”

John cocked an eyebrow at Teyla who was laughing silently. John rolled off his sun lounger, smoothly scooping up Torren and dumping him, carefully, on Teyla.

“I’m a responsible adult.”

“Yes, John,” Teyla said equably, settling her son against her side.

“I’ll come with you.” Toby sauntered over.

“Thank you, Toby.”

“Hey.” John pointed at his own chest. Toby was the little brother.

Steve bounded out of his house with an armful of kit. John wondered why he had so many sets of fins and masks but figured: squids and their toys.

Danny came right out after him wielding the paintbrush.

“The coals are going to be hot enough in half an hour to sear the steaks. Don’t stay out too long.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Danny lowered his brows and scowled.

Steve ignored him, which was obviously with the ease of long practice. He dropped the equipment on the sand, immediately crouching to set a pair of fins almost twice the length of the others aside.

“Here.” He handed a black rubberised slip-on pair of short fins to Grant. “These are the easiest to manage. And this mask is great. It’s old fashioned, but it gives you a nice unimpeded view.” He just tossed a black set of neoprene boots and long fins at John.

Toby examined the tip of one fin which looked a little chewed on.

“My dog, when I was fourteen. Not a shark. Honest.”

“I’ve never swum with flippers before.” Toby twisted them this way and that.

“Fins,” Steve corrected.

“Not surprised,” Rodney snorted, happily ensconced on John’s sun lounger slathering on factor 1000 sunscreen. “Not a lot of sea in Toronto. Lakes, but no seas.”

“You’ll be fine. Put them on in the water,” Steve advised just before Grant could drop down on his butt on the sand and pull on his fins.

John checked the fit of his chosen mask, inhaling thorough his nose and creating a pressure vacuum. Then he pulled on the neoprene boots, they were a little large.

“Spit in the inside of the mask, rub the spit over the lenses and rinse off the excess in the sea,” Steve said.

“And he wonders why I don’t swim.” Danny stalked off to the barbeques, disgusted face firmly fixed.

“It’s to stop them fogging up. It’s perfectly fine.” Steve pulled off his t-shirt in one smooth motion and tossed it on the spare lounger.

“You have tattoos,” Grant said.

“Yeah.” Steve flexed his shoulders.

“They’re complicated.” Grant leaned over and squinted. “Did they hurt?”

“Yes. It’s a different kind of pain.” Steve shrugged. “It’s intense but transitory, you know, in the scheme of things.”

“Seems a silly thing to do. Hmmm.” Grant pootled off into the water swinging his fins and mask.

John bit his bottom lip to stop laughing at Steve’s flabbergasted expression. He guessed that Steve was used to people admiring his tats or being disapproving and categorising him as a thug. Grant’s simple dismissal of Steve’s tats as _silly_ was probably unprecedented.

Toby held up his arm, showing the inside of his wrist and an ankh tattoo.

“I don’t have any.” John pulled off his own t-shirt, tossed it on top of Steve’s, and followed Grant into the water.

The water was warm and glorious. The oceanic water around Atlantis was generally pretty cold, sited in the north to south surface current from the planet’s polar ice cap. The marine biologists on Atlantis had asked about moving the ship around the planet. And really, John had no objection, it would be kind of different surfing, doing it in a city-ship, but Woolsey was a party pooper.

He ducked down and slipped on the fins. They made him ungainly, as he tottered across the rippled sand until the sea reached his chest. Gobbing in the mask, he followed Steve’s instructions and tried to not to retch. Rinsing and then fitting it, he got the snorkel mouthpiece positioned correctly and ducked under the water.

It was better than space walking, because the sea was there around you, supporting and embracing. There was a tiny silver fish just on the edge of his view, but when John turned his head it had zipped out of sight. A splash followed by a long torpedo shape resolved into Steve, dolphining through the water with a controlled, smooth undulation. Sticking his head under the water, Grant watched him slide by, mouth open, forgetting to breathe around his snorkel. John pointed at his own mouth, telling Grant to remember his mouthpiece. Quickly, he set it right and then sunk into the water, grinning around his snorkel. Toby was happily trundling along at the surface, kicking his legs.

Steve made a smooth u-turn and came back to check on them. He hadn’t taken a breath yet. Jerking his thumb to the left, he arrowed ahead with a single kick, and returned a second later, swimming swoops around Grant.

John got himself orientated and started to kick in the direction Steve had indicated. Remembering to only move his legs from the hips in slow, easy movements, he swam just under the surface of the water, breathing through the snorkel. Behind him, he knew that Steve was giving Grant a quick lesson in using fins. The little rocky outcrop seemed to be part natural and part rock armouring. Toby was finning over a bunch of rocks following something. Getting closer, it resolved into a single, translucent light bulb floating in the water with trailing tentacles. It was a jellyfish and Toby was giving it a wide berth as the umbrella-light bulb gently bobbed along.

Toby gave him a thumbs up. _::It’s amazing. Do you think it can sting?::_

 _I guess so. Can’t they all?_

 _::Dunno::_

Telepathy was suddenly pretty cool.

 _Have you seen the octopus?_

 _::Steve said that it lives a little further out::_

Kicking furiously, about five kicks for every one of Steve’s, Grant caught up. Steve coasted along at his side, illustrating a smoother, easier motion with a waving hand. Grant managed to drop his kicking down to three.

Steve dolphin-kicked and was ahead of them in a heartbeat. The octopus was tucked between a massive piece of rectangular concrete lying on top of boulders providing a perfect cranny. It seemed to be waiting for him, obviously used to Steve. Pulsating red and ochre, it curled its tentacles around a cowry shell.

 _::Amazing::_

 _It’s changing colour. Green…_

Holding its treat, the octopus squeezed into the smallest space available and disappeared into the maze of rocks and seaweed. Grant was taking photograph after photo with what looked like a standard Panasonic Lumix camera with a force field around it.

 _Grant?_

Toby looked at him, expression perplexed behind the mask. _::He can’t hear you, John. What’s the matter?::_

 _Grant and Ancient tech. He’s already lost his tricorder to an explosion. Impossible. I swear, scientists; they’re the definition of trying to herd cats._

Toby laughed like water cascading over a waterfall; it chimed in John’s head. Grant turned the camera in their direction and flashed off a photograph. Steve eeled up behind them, slinging his arms over their shoulders.

Grant snapped off a shot.

John was so going to have to get a copy of that photograph.

 **The end**


End file.
